


Seek Out The Unworthy

by squire



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BAMF!John, BAMF!Mary, Blood, CIA, Case Fic, Coded messaging, Forgiveness, Gen, Hostage Situations, LGBT original character, MI6, Mind-Fuck, Morse Code, Organized Crime, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-His Last Vow, Shooting, Undercover Missions, Universe Alteration, Whump, freighthopping/train hopping, graphic description of violence, imaginary conversations, mentions of torture, morally questionable behaviour, prison break - Freeform, psychopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-21 07:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 44,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1541996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squire/pseuds/squire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after the events of His Last Vow - but this time, the plane carrying Sherlock off to Eastern Europe never turned around, and John's life is very different as a result.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> This story simply wouldn't be possible without Ariane DeVere, an amazingly dedicated beta and one of the kindest human beings I've ever had the honour of knowing.

The man is there in the afternoons, nursing a stained cup of that cat piss they pass for coffee in the bistro opposite the A&E entrance. He’s there in the mornings, face half-hidden by a hoodie or a dirty baseball cap, slipping out of sight and resurfacing again from the crowd as they wait at the traffic lights. He’s there in the evenings, among the swaying bodies falling into the rhythm of the Tube lullaby, never farther than half a carriage away. 

He’s lurking at the edge of John’s attention for four days, something vague and disconcerting like a grain of sand in your shoe, the one you feel on every step and yet you’re unable to shake it out. It takes John four days to finally put a face to the feeling. He used to be better at watching his own back – but then, he’s not in Afghanistan, and London is not a battlefield either, not any more. Still, he blames his exhaustion on the recent lack of sleep for such a slip. _One more week of teething and the Watson family would be done in_ , John muses tiredly. He thinks that he might flip the man the middle finger when he leaves for work later, just for the fun of it. 

That evening, the now familiar face is nowhere to be seen. It’s almost disappointing. 

John spots the next one after two days. He congratulates himself on the improvement but the truth is, they aren’t exactly subtle. John would expect better from someone on Mycroft’s payroll. 

In hindsight, it’s this thought that should have alarmed him in the first place. But John is tired of listening to his instincts; he brought the art of turning a deaf ear on them to mastery, because the last time he gave in to his instincts what happened? He’s not going down that road again, thank you very much.   

It becomes sort of a game. After a quick succession of three shadows in five days, John crosses the street on his way home one afternoon and finds the very first one on his usual chair in the bistro. As he catches the man’s bored gaze through the window, John quirks one corner of his mouth up in a fleeting smile. The man shrugs without really moving his shoulders, just a twitch of his brows and jaw, an equally fleeting acknowledgement. 

John has no idea why he’s being watched. More than six months have passed since that turmoil of Christmas, days and weeks blurring together like the synonymous stops on the Underground ride, whole months like fluorescent lights flashing and fading behind the window, undistinguishable, uneventful. In between the stultifying shift rotation and a sleepless night every three days, John Watson feels unmoored and adrift in time, a mere passenger in the train of his life, watching it whirl around him and trying to get a grasp but ending with empty hands every time. 

Emma Rose is a terrible sleeper; she cried constantly through the first three months of her tiny life and even now she only sleeps soundly when she’s in a pram, the cabs honking and tyres screeching and London life buzzing around her. She already lost the dark mop of hair she was born with and now her head is bald as a knee, with only a few wisps of golden hair above her nape. Her light blue eyes resent sunlight and she cries every time the bright July sun gets directly in her face. She hates the pram when she’s awake, trying all the time to roll over on her belly which she can’t do properly yet but it should happen any day now, as Mary assures him. Perhaps John would be less frustrated and more grounded in reality if he could actually watch his daughter grow, watch her take all those little steps on the road from a baby to a person, but the shift schedule at the A&E is ruthless and the best paid shifts are the weekend extra ones and really, this is just another thing that Sherlock bloody Holmes should be blamed for, John thinks as he cradles the little wailing thing in his arms and watches his wife growing day by day more cocooned in all the fuss over the baby and drifting farther and farther from him. 

Because it is Sherlock’s fault, in a way. 

“I’ve been expecting some standards to be upheld with regard to your reputation, Doctor Watson. I’m afraid that your choice of friends casts a bad light on my establishment.” DoctorVerner had been John’s senior associate and the actual owner of the clinic where John had worked as a GP. He liked to lay down the law and he didn’t like tabloid publicity. 

When Mary commenced her maternity leave, for the first time John considered swallowing his pride and taking up one of the job offers Mycroft used to try and bribe him with. Only, nothing ever came up. It seemed that whatever graces John had been in during his association with Sherlock, they were withdrawn as soon as this association came to an end. 

He hasn’t heard a word from Sherlock since that day he left for Eastern Europe. He hasn’t updated his blog in six months. He doesn’t dream of cases any more. In fact, he doesn’t dream at all, his sleep being reduced to intermittent naps that leave him feeling run over by a roadroller instead of rested. Nothing ever happens to John Watson.

 

*

 

John hears the buzz of his phone, reverberating off the rickety shelf inside his locker, as soon as he steps into the changing room. He ignores it, peeling off the stained scrubs instead and tossing them into the laundry bin. Thank God his light blue work trousers are intact, but the shirt is a write-off. And that’s not even the whole of the damage. John goes to the sink, turns the taps full on, steaming hot water turning pink before it whirls down the plug hole, and he inspects his face in the mirror. Damn the arterial bleedings. The disposable mask protected most of his face but he’s still got dried blood in his eyebrows. 

The phone is still buzzing when he gets back, towelling off his hair and feeling once more like a human being. John wonders briefly who’s calling – he’s fairly sure that all the people who know his new number also know that he’s not allowed to have a phone about his person at work. It’s still a good ten minutes until the end of his hours today, anyway. 

He opens the locker, throws the clean shirt around his shoulders first – the hospital won’t waste money on heating in the basement in the summer no matter that the bloody room is bloody freezing all year long – and then he looks at the glowing screen of his phone, registers the caller’s ID and his skin is instantly prickled with a thousand cold needles that have nothing to do with the temperature in the room. 

It’s Mary. Mary never calls him – if she wanted him to pick up some groceries on his way home, she would text him. She absolutely knows when John’s shift ends. Mary is used to having her day organized by minutes and she probably keeps tabs on John out of habit. 

 _This has got to be about Emma_ , gripping fear twists John’s insides into a tight knot as he stares at the screen, paralyzed. Some little part of his brain wants to laugh at the utter mockery of it: here he was, only this morning, thinking how piss poor a job he was doing of being a father. Believing that he didn’t, _couldn’t_ care for the baby as his daughter, his own flesh, should deserve. Tracing the edges of the love for her in his damaged heart and finding it wanting, dysfunctional, _not enough_. 

Now he stares at the angry glow of his phone screen and he understands with blinding clarity that the love of a father has no edges, that it is the thing keeping him on his feet every day and currently swallowing him from inside out until the only thought left in his brain is – _God, let this not be about Emma. Please, God, let her be all right._

A second, two at the most, before he snaps out of the shock and taps the green button. Too late. The call has been redirected to the voicemail, and then abruptly disconnected. John is shaking so badly that he has to grip the door of the locker with his free hand before his knees give out. The screen now shows the list of missed calls, there are eight of them and not a single voicemail; Mary must have wanted to get to him, to actually speak with him, so badly.   

For another couple of seconds John waits for the ninth call, wills Mary to try again. Then he swears and makes the call himself. 

 _The number you are calling is currently unavailable._ John clutches his fist around the phone and fights the urge to smash it against the concrete floor. His fingers hurt. Something feels not quite right as he storms out of the changing room, up the stairs, out of the hospital. Coming to a halt on the pavement, arm raised in a signal for a cab, and the people staring should probably bother him but _the number you are calling is currently unavailable_ and why the hell won’t the cabs stop for him? 

“None of the cabs would take me,” he hears the vexed voice like an echo through the panic pounding in his ears, an image of Sherlock covered in pig’s blood flashing before his eyes. John takes a deep breath and realizes that he’s standing on a busy street in his loose blue linen work trousers, practically naked from the waist up, the unbuttoned shirt flapping from his shoulders, his wet hair sticking in every direction – good thing he at least got the blood off his face, John sniggers internally because it’s ridiculous. It’s terrifying and ridiculous and when he gets home he’ll probably find that the neighbour’s brat pinched Mary’s phone again and played with it until the battery went flat. John forcibly repeats this thought with every shirt button he pushes through its hole, calming down and getting as respectable as he can under the circumstances, and finally one cab takes pity on him. 

As he slides onto the back seat, he notices the empty chair in the bistro. For the first time it occurs to him that the men watching him might not have been Mycroft’s men at all.

 

*

 

The house looks all right. John pays the cabbie and casts surreptitious looks up and down the street. No familiar face in sight, no strange face idling around suspiciously either. Nobody’s followed him here, nobody’s waiting. The street is quiet. 

The front door is unlocked. _Mary could’ve forgotten. Took Emma out, distracted by her crying..._  

Mary’s keys are on the hook by the front door. 

Her phone lies on the floor in the hallway, screen cracked and dead, the battery casing popped off the back and the battery itself lying under the shoe rack where it had fallen when someone smashed the phone on the floor. 

Emma’s new buggy is in the closet, folded up, rollers clean. They haven’t even been out today. 

The house is quiet for the first time since the baby arrived in it. John doesn’t trust his own voice to call out. He goes through every room, not even looking for Mary or Emma any more, scanning the carpets for bloodstains instead, searching for signs of struggle, checking the window frames. The house tells him nothing. 

 _Sit. Think._ He sits down in the living room and very calmly dials a number he hasn’t dialled in six months.

 

*

 

 

 _“Hello, Doctor Watson. To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”_  

Mycroft’s voice flows over the phrase as smoothly as a machine recording. John would have expected a certain degree of smugness and he was prepared to threaten and fight if Mycroft was indeed the man behind the kidnapping. Or John would have welcomed a bit of concern, for the sake of old acquaintances, if Mycroft wasn’t.  

Not this... indifference. John clenches his teeth and prepares himself to beg. He would beg, oh how he would. 

“Hello. I... I believe that my wife and daughter have been kidnapped.” Neutral statement, where John would very much like to point a blaming finger but he needs to be careful for the time being. 

 _“Is that so?”_  

And there it is, the hint of... amusement? Before John draws in enough breath to burst outwith fury, Mycroft continues: 

_“I’m afraid that – erm, kidnappings aren’t quite my area of expertise, Doctor Watson. You should be contacting the police. Although, in this case...”_

The voice trails off, heavy with significance. John is damn well aware of the reasons Mycroft leaves unspoken: Mary is very probably wanted in multiple countries, and if her face were to show up in the Missing Persons register, someone could be alerted to her new existence and she would be in more danger than she already is. 

Then the slight hesitation on the subject word in Mycroft’s previous statement finally registers with John and he frowns. 

“Hang on a minute. You don’t think they were kidnapped? Mycroft, for God’s sake, what do you _know_?” 

_“I assure you, nothing at all. We aren’t detecting any higher level of terroristic activity than usual. You may remember, Doctor, that there aren’t even any CCTV cameras near your house. You live in a safe neighbourhood.”_

Now the man is plainly mocking him. John keeps his voice in check by sheer force of will. 

“So you don’t have any idea about who could have kidnapped them?” 

 _“As to the apparent kidnapping...”_ Mycroft sighs through the line as if bored. _“I’m almost surprised, Doctor, that you weren’t seriously expecting this. You must have known that such a thing could happen.”_

“What?” 

_“You married a professional assassin. Make your own con–”_

“I didn’t know that when I married her! And that’s beside the point, Mary would never–” 

Mycroft carries on in that disinterested voice, oblivious to John’s shouting: 

 _“You didn’t seek annulment once you discovered that the marriage was entered into under a false identity and thus is effectively illegal. You accepted her into your home even after you were made aware of her crimes and you have decided to raise a child with her. Seriously, Doctor, I don’t know what you were expecting and I certainly don’t know what you expect from me now.”_  

John’s reply is lame and he knows it. “Mary wouldn’t leave me of her own volition. And I need your help. You must know _something_.” 

 _“And what makes you think that even if I did, I would be inclined to share it with you?”_  

“Mycroft, I swear, if this is about some fucking revenge–” Then, suddenly, an idea pops up in John’s over-strained brain. “Does Sherlock know?” 

_“Amazing that you should think of him now. You haven’t exhibited any interest in my brother’s well-being in six months.”_

“One isn’t supposed to inquire about MI6 agents on a secret mission,” John gets through his teeth with what he thinks is spectacular patience. 

_“No indeed.”_

“You have to tell him. I’m sure Sherlock would want to help me. He promised–” 

 _“For your sake, Doctor, I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear what you were going to say right there.”_ The hostility in Mycroft’s voice is so open that John’s jaw actually drops. 

“Listen, I know you blame me for what Sherlock thought he had to do for me. But this isn’t about me. There is a baby, Mycroft, an innocent baby five months old. Please.” 

 _“I’m not my brother, Doctor. I’m not bound to uphold his silly vows. I’d like you not to inconvenience me any further with this matter. Goodbye.”_  

John stares at the phone in his hand in something close to shock. Then, just out of spite, he dials Mycroft’s number again. 

_The number you have dialled is not a working number._

 

*

 

Wandering around the house, John tries to think of what to do now. The police are out of the picture for sure. There isn’t a clue left for them anyway: no signs of forced entry, not a bit of a rucked-up carpet to indicate a struggle, no stranger’s footprints, nothing out of ordinary. 

“You’re making the same mistake as you did in the case of the Silver Maze.” 

John looks up, surprised by the clarity with which the imagined voice bounces off the silence of the house. Sherlock, in all his Savile Row glory, stands in the middle of the living room where John’s imagination has planted him and surveys everything around him with bold disdain in his face. 

“Remember, John? Everyone wondered how the murderer could get past the amusement park security system without it going off. While the truth was simple – the system didn’t go off because it was disabled manually. An inside job.” 

“This is Mycroft messing with my head, isn’t it?” John asks wearily. “I’m not going to believe Mary would take the baby and leave me. Simply no.” 

 _Wouldn’t she?_ The little guilty voice in his head is annoyingly persistent. Yes, they’ve grown a bit distant over the months, but that happens to almost every couple when the child comes into the equation. Mary loves him, John is sure of it. 

The Sherlock in John’s head clicks his tongue. 

“Don’t be silly, John. Of course she wouldn’t. She shot me to keep you, after all.” 

John cringes at the brutal honesty of his own subconscious but listens nonetheless. 

“It’s the principle. You’re looking for things from outside, things added in here: blood, footprints... Try to look for _what’s missing_ from here.” 

And this time, John can see it. Emma’s favourite stuffed animal, missing from the nursery. The pink plastic teapot that plays _It’s teatime!_ ad nauseam whenever you tip the pot: John hates the toy. A pack of nappies that he opened only that morning: it’s half empty now. Mary’s wallet is on the mantelpiece as usual, her driving licence and credit card both inside, but all the cash is gone. So is the cash John kept in the sea shell on the bookshelf: an impromptu piggy bank for cases of unexpected household repairs. Mary’s shoes are all in a neat row on the rack but her trainers aren’t in the closet where she keeps them. 

In the kitchen, there are traces of flour on the worktop. Was she baking bread when – whatever it was – happened? No. There’s still half a loaf in the breadbin and the bread maker appliance is stone cold, clean and put away. Bits of the whitish powder are around the waste bin too. John opens it. It’s almost full of flour. 

The big tin in the back of the kitchen cabinet where Mary kept flour (“It’s better protected from the moisture this way”) is, on the other hand, empty but for a few smears at the bottom. 

“So that’s where she kept the gun.” 

Sherlock nods with pleased satisfaction and John feels sick in his stomach. He always assumed that Mary got rid of the gun – it would be the only reasonable thing to do, after... after what she did at Magnussen’s office. 

She kept it.  And now she has taken it with her, wherever she had to flee. She packed in haste, prepared to go into hiding once more, taking the absolute minimum she needed for hers and Emma’s survival for a couple of hours. She tried to call John but the time must have been against her. 

“But why didn’t she leave a message? A voicemail, when she phoned me? Or a bloody note?” John talks aloud now and he couldn’t care less. The unnatural quiet of the house is driving him to distraction; it’s actually better to talk to an imaginary Sherlock than to face the silence alone. 

“Perhaps she suspected that your phone could be bugged. You’ve been followed for a week now, so it’s not unlikely it was. I’d check that if I were you. She could also think they’d scour the house after she escaped.” 

They are in the bathroom now, even though only one of them is reflected in the mirror. It’s the last room in the house Mary would have entered in her packing of Emma’s things. One of the taps is leaking and the persistent _drip drip drip_ gets on John’s nerves. He should fix it soon... 

Wait a minute. He already fixed it. Mary complained about the leak on the cold water tap for two days but he finally got to it yesterday evening. 

But it’s the hot water one this time. John touches it tentatively and finds that the tap has been left open a crack. Mary wouldn’t be so careless. It was done on purpose. 

John turns the tap full on and watches the water flow, puzzled. Somehow the setting reminds him of something, something he should know, something they both talked about not so long ago... 

The silly movie they watched – in turns, because Emma wouldn’t sleep longer than half an hour because of the damn teething – last week. The one where the sister communicated through messages written by fingers on the mirrors and window panes. A finger doesn’t leave a visible trace on a dry glass surface, the grease and sweat from a fingertip is not enough; but once you add steam into the air, it will condense on the cold glass everywhere except for the places the fingers touched. 

The hot water runs into the sink and steam rises into the air. On the fogged mirror, uneven strokes of the invisible message stand out. Three letters: 

CIA. 

“Bravo, John. You’ll make a detective yet.”

 


	2. The Right Question

John pours boiling water onto the teabag in the biggest cup they’ve got and thinks absently that he should perhaps be committed. His house has probably been raided by foreign intelligence agents, his wife has disappeared together with their infant child, and here he is, standing in their kitchen and making tea. 

The truth is, there’s not much else to do now. He needs to think about how he should proceed. Brainy might be the new sexy but John has already pulled eight hours of strenuous shift at the hospital and an hour of extreme emotional upheaval afterwards and now he’s just exhausted. 

“You should at least change those ridiculous trousers.” 

“Right, you posh git,” John agrees, silently this time. His phone might be not the only place where the CIA left their bugs. 

It’s strange how calming an effect a cup of tea and a pair of old jeans can have on a person. The sharp spikes of emotion – panic, shock, rage – that kept on choking him for the last hour and slowed his thought processes to half-speed have smoothed out and transformed into a low background hum that is actually... helpful. John’s fear has settled down to a cold sense of distant dread, no more numbing but keeping him alert instead – the kind of awareness he used to feel in Afghanistan where the danger was ever-present. His anger at Mycroft – because there’s no way Mycroft Holmes wouldn’t know about CIA operatives arriving in the country – has cooled down to a rock-hard determination. It may be a bit not good that John is feeling alive again when the people he lives for have been taken from him; but John is going to find his family – and if he happens to enjoy the hunt, so be it. 

Scraps from that last conversation he had with Sherlock come to the forefront of his mind. The forced, uneasy smile tugs on his lips once again as if he was still there, standing on the tarmac: “For how long?” 

The Sherlock in his mind has the same evasive look he had then when he repeats the words, “Six months, my brother estimates. He’s never wrong.” 

John counts the weeks. Six months, come and gone. “So, isn’t someone slacking a bit? You should be back by now. Where are you?” 

It’s a silly question even for an imaginary conversation and Sherlock duly doesn’t dignify it with a response. 

Well, if Mycroft isn’t going to be forthcoming any more, there are other people who care about Sherlock. John drops his phone into the kitchen waste bin – let the people have some fun with the flour when they come to retrieve the bug – puts on his black jacket and can almost feel the phantom weight of the gun against the small of his back. 

Sadly, this part of his past is now safely stored in some Scotland Yard evidence depository. 

 

He takes the Tube to Baker Street. If he’s being followed, then the men definitely outclass those from last week. John sees nobody during the train ride, and the CCTV camera that used to be trained on the front door of 221b is now fixed on the crossroads instead. 

It’s nothing out of the ordinary, John being here, after all. He has dropped by Mrs. H for a cuppa and a chat at least four times in the last six months. And Mrs. Hudson came over to coo over the baby a couple of times. It’s too bad her hip won’t allow her some regular pram-pushing sessions; the Watsons can’t really afford a babysitter. Yet, when she opens the front door and sees John on the doorstep, something is different. 

Her eyes are red even in the weak evening light and as soon she takes in the expression on John’s face, her hand flies to her mouth to stifle a cry of indignation. 

“Oh dear!” she exclaims. “Has he told you?” 

John blinks. “What?” But Mrs. Hudson is already ushering him inside, nattering away in an unhappy and reproachful tone that John doesn’t understand. 

“He shouldn’t have. That silly man! It was his little brother’s last wish, and even if I disagreed with him at the time, he was right to not want you to know. Haven’t you already suffered enough?” 

“Sorry, Mrs. Hudson, what?” Through the confusion of her words, something ugly begins to take shape in John’s mind. “Sherlock’s last wish? Me not knowing – what?” 

“Oh!” Now she clasps both hands over her mouth and looks even unhappier than before. 

“Mr. Holmes hasn’t told you, then,” she offers tentatively. 

“Mycroft is not telling me anything nowadays, Mrs. Hudson.” John wants to be patient with her but the ugly something gets only too clear now. 

“Oh God, I’ve mucked it up,” she laments and then, finally, she scrambles together enough coherence to say, “It’s Sherlock. I’m afraid he’s– he’s not coming back this time.”

 

The ticking of the clock is the only sound John hears for a while – not his own breath, not even his heartbeat. Then he buckles down hard onto the wooden chair at the kitchen table. 

“You mean he’s dead.” 

She sits down gingerly onto the chair opposite, careful in her movements as if she fears that even the soft sound of an old lady sitting down could shatter John’s sanity to pieces. 

“I don’t really know. I mean – there wasn’t anything official. This secret service business – they wouldn’t really tell us, would they? But he told me – Sherlock told me back then in January, before he was sent away. That if he wasn’t back in six months, he’d be dead by then. And it’s been–” 

“More than six months already,” John finishes for her. She cannot hold back a sob and John pats her arm, his hand moving out of habit, muscle memory following the well trodden path of comforting strangers in the hospital waiting room. There should be sorrow, and pain, and a freshly bleeding wound in his heart, but all John can feel at this moment is utter confusion. 

It explains so much – Mycroft’s vengeful hostility, for instance. _Six months, my brother estimates_. God, Mycroft must have known that he was sending Sherlock on a suicide mission... for a murder committed in the name of John’s happiness. The timing of things – this cannot be coincidence, the expiry of Sherlock’s time limit and the CIA getting on Mary’s track so suddenly after five quiet years. 

Suicide mission. And Sherlock didn’t want him to know. _That_ doesn’t make sense. He must have known that John would start having questions. Maybe not right after the six months timestamp, but eventually he would. 

 _Amazing that you should inquire after him now_ , Mycroft had said, and now John’s sense of failure recognises the bitter undercurrents in that well-polished voice. A friend would have asked sooner. A best friend would have... John knows the end of that thought, and it was only for his self-preservation that he hadn’t allowed it to occur to him in those six months: _I should have gone with him. If they made him pay for a murder, they should have made me do the same for being an accomplice._

But there was Mary, and a baby on the way, and now everything’s blown to pieces and John’s only hope is a dead man, dead according to his own prophecy. 

John feels like a mere shell of himself.  He lost the normalcy of his life in the hospital changing room, from the moment he saw the missed phone call. He lost the pretence of his readiness for this kind of life when he let himself be guided by the long-forgotten instincts personified in an imaginary detective. What’s left of him now? 

“I need to go upstairs. To the flat,” he hears his own voice say through the white noise of his scattering, confused thoughts. 

“Of course, dear.” 

John gets up and waits. Mrs. Hudson continues to sit and to wipe her eyes before she remembers that John doesn’t have the key to 221b any more. “Oh my. Let’s go then.” 

John drags his feet up the seventeen steps, counting them as he goes. This might be the last time he ever takes this route and he cannot even begin to consider how wrong this idea feels. 

“The game is never over, John.” Sherlock waits for him on the landing, leaning against the door the way he did in the evening of the first day they met, coat open and scarf askew, face alight with the excitement of the prospect of all things turning out well for him at last. The memory is so bright that John’s eyes water and he’s glad that Mrs. Hudson is following him up the stairs and cannot see his face. He hears her talking and at first he just filters it but then something catches his attention.   

“... and those people that came about a fortnight ago, that’s when I started to worry. I guess Mr. Holmes sent them but they really gave me the creeps. They looked like the cleaners my husband used to– oh, never mind.” 

The flat is, indeed, almost supernaturally tidy. 

“They went through Sherlock’s things, took pretty much every bit of paper they found, all those books, even the ones you gave him for Christmas, ransacked every room – your old bedroom, too – and when I asked after Sherlock they said that ‘they weren’t at liberty to say’, can you believe that!” 

The curtains are drawn. John crosses the living room and comes to a halt in front of the cabinet where Sherlock kept the memorabilia from the interesting cases. As he suspected, Irene’s camera phone is gone from its drawer. Mycroft’s men wouldn’t have bothered with retrieving it but CIA agents could have. For some of them it could have been personal. 

“Then they went for his laptop and I said, ‘But that’s Doctor Watson’s, gentlemen.’ Because, you know, Sherlock wanted me to give it to you if he died. He told me that you could use something up-to-date for your blog and that the keyboard on your old laptop was rubbish anyway, driving him crazy with those noisy keys. So I stood my ground about the laptop and they said that I could keep it but they’d need to wipe the classified data and so they did that and let me keep it.” 

“That was very... nice of you, Mrs. H. And brave,” John manages to chip in when she stops for breath. The landlady brightens up a bit. 

John looks around. So many places where the surveillance could be hidden. He needs to get Mrs. Hudson out of the room before he starts on the laptop. 

“I’ll just pop down for the tea tray, dear, shall I?” 

Well, problem solved. John lets her bustle down and up again and through into the kitchen, settling himself behind the desk and fixing his gaze on the square chair in front of the fireplace. Sherlock, hands steepled under his chin, stares calmly back. 

This make-believe conversation is a bit awkward. “I feel like a bloody client,” John imagines himself sighing.  

“Then you’d better not be boring,” Sherlock smirks and continues to scrutinise him with that unnerving focus that John so rarely felt upon himself – no wonder the clients always got snappy about ten minutes into their explanations. Well, saving John’s family is a _case_ of sorts, and he only hopes that on a scale from one to ten, this one is at least twelve. 

“So, tell me, Sherlock: what’s this claptrap about me having your laptop?” John thinks towards his friend. “Because you’d rather lick the ground than let me touch your laptop, no matter how often you borrowed mine.” 

“Confiscated.” 

John rolls his eyes and activates the laptop. No login screen, the desktop neat save for the icons of the factory setting programs. A quick check on the status reveals that the memory drives are indeed empty. The laptop is as clean as new. 

“So there has got to be a message. You knew they’d come for your things. You must have known they would also wipe the laptop. So it’s got to be something else. Some code.” 

Sherlock in the chair looks hopeful and encouraging. Pity that it’s the same expression he wore at the time John deduced Carl Powers’ trainers. John decides that his subconscious is a wicked, vindictive thing. Why can’t he picture a genuinely pleased Sherlock? 

“I wish you were here for real,” John concedes. “I’m not you, not that clever.” 

“Clever...” Sherlock’s voice sounds a bit slurred now. John looks up and finds another version of his friend in the chair: this time it’s the drunken Sherlock from the stag night, complete with that irresistible open smile and the Rizla paper stuck to his forehead. John is impressed with himself. The whole night is a bit of a blur in his memory but this picture, somehow, stands out clearly. 

“... nice-ish, not as tall as people think I am, important to some people, but I tend to rub them up the wrong way... I’m you, aren’t I?” 

“What’s that supposed to mean? Am I meant to be you?” 

Sherlock slumps backwards in the chair, long legs sliding on the rug, the very picture of disappointment. 

“Wait. I’m meant to _act_ like you.” 

“Perhaps you’re just meant to _use_ my laptop,” Sherlock prompts, obviously despairing of the glacial speed of John’s deductions. 

“Shall I fetch some biscuits, dear?” John has to blink twice to make sure this Mrs. Hudson is not only in his head.   

“That would be lovely.” Whatever buys him some more time to get through this painstaking task of figuring out Sherlock’s message, he’s okay with that. 

“What was it you told her about the laptop? I guess exact words are a bit moot given her memory, but still. Something about my keyboard being loud? You never complained about that.” 

“If you just hunt and peck all the time, there’s not much to complain about,” Sherlock shrugs. 

“So it’s the keys, then.” John opens a new document and begins to press one key after another, QWER and so on. Each letter appearing on the screen is accompanied with a soft _click_. TYUI, and then no click for O. 

John tries harder. The O key is lagging. It takes a hard stab with his finger to make it cooperate. Curious, he goes on: PASDFG and then another pause at H. J is right next to it, having the same issue, and then it’s okay for almost all the rest until the N. 

OHJN. Four lagging keys. 

“A bit obvious, weren’t you?” John huffs. 

Now Sherlock really looks proud. “Knew you’d figure it out.” 

Mrs. Hudson is still downstairs in search of biscuits. John pulls out a pocket knife and digs the offending keys out of the keyboard. When he looks closely at the connections, he can see that they have been coated with some colourless, squishy substance so they won’t click when pressed. 

John turns the keys in his palm. There is something written in pencil on the bottom side of each little square of plastic. Another four letters, some in upper, some in lower case: a small ‘n’ and ‘s’ under the O and H respectively, and large L and G under the last two letters. On his palm, preventing any hidden camera from shooting what he’s seeing, John arranges the keys in the obvious order – _JOHN_ – and then he reads the message. 

Leinster Gardens. 

John wipes the letters off the keys, the message turning into a black smear of lead on the pad of his thumb. He tucks the keys back into their respective places right in time for Mrs. Hudson to come up to him with a nice, perfect cup of tea. 

John accepts the tea and then he lets his fingers go slack around the cup. The porcelain cracks on the desk and the hot liquid splashes all over the open laptop. The gel under the keys dissolves in the hot tea and bubbles up over half of the keyboard. 

“I’m so sorry!” they cry in unison as John jumps away, dabbing at his trousers and wincing at the sting from the hot liquid. Yes, some of the tea has landed off mark. But the safety of his knowledge is worth the wound. 

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Mrs. H. I guess I’m too tired.” 

“It’s been a shock, I know,” she answers unhappily. “I’m sorry I blurted it out to you like that. He really didn’t want you to know.” 

Sherlock in the chair by the fireplace is very quiet. There’s no fire and yet the lights and shadows dance across his face, painting the unmoving canvas with all the emotion the imaginary flames are able to lend. He used to sit there while his mind pursued the toughest mysteries. 

“You didn’t ask me why I wanted you not to know,” Sherlock says. 

John smiles, a real, assuring smile for Mrs. Hudson. In his mind, he adds to it an answer: 

“I know why. So I wouldn’t believe it.”


	3. Alley Allies

The days of summer are already getting shorter, the dusk setting in a bit sooner every day. The street lighting is already on, orange glow of the bulbs insipid against the pale yellowish grey of the sky after the sunset. John lingers in front of the Tesco Express at Melcombe Street, hands stuck in his pockets and absentmindedly running the little change there through his fingers, as if the only question bothering him is what he should buy for a late supper before the shop closes for the night. 

John wasn’t exactly exaggerating when he blamed the splashing of the tea on his tiredness, and  food is actually the last thing on his mind. His brain is still in full-on mode, fuelled by the adrenaline rush, but his body is starting to make complaints. He should be heading home, as defeated as it sounds. He can’t turn to the police; and of the Holmes brothers, he’s lost the one and alienated the other. Going back home and getting into bed could lull anyone who’s been following him into a false sense of security. It would be the sufficiently reasonable thing to do. 

That’s why John at last enters the supermarket, buys a rather stale sandwich and a pocket torchlight and withdraws fifty quid from his account at the cashback counter, ignoring the cashier’s mildly inquisitive glance at the strange selection. He paid good attention in the aisles and he’s sure that whoever’s following him now, they’re waiting for him outside. 

The sky is dark and clouded when John emerges on the streets again. He’s itching with the urge to take those few stops along the Circle line and get to Sherlock’s old bolthole as quickly as possible but that would be the least reasonable thing to do. John might have provided some contrast to Sherlock’s genius in the past but he’s not stupid altogether. 

The quickest route by road from Baker Street to Leinster Gardens is etched on his memory like a third-degree burn. He can afford a few deviations along the way. 

He spots the guy behind him three turns into his meandering journey. It’s nothing more than an impression, a vague shape of a tall, lanky man in a hoodie disappearing out of sight too quickly for it to be a late pedestrian or an early pub crawler. John is almost tempted to turn around and run after him. This time, their exchange won’t be as good-natured as it was when John thought that he was being watched by some disinterested Government underling. This time, he’d like to break the man’s jaw. 

A convenient alley, narrow and very dark, opens just then on his left and John takes a dash into it, hoping he’ll be through before his shadow realizes what’s wrong. The light of the solitary lamp post at the alley opening isn’t enough to illuminate even half of its length and soon John trips and almost falls to the ground, feet caught in a plastic rubbish bag he didn’t have a chance of seeing. Cursing under his breath, he disentangles himself and hurries on, only to collide face first with a wire fence a moment later. 

Damn. The stars John is seeing don’t actually help to enhance the visibility around him. He draws himself up on tiptoes but even like that he cannot reach the top of the fence. Not only is the alley blind but the loud rattling woke up a dog in an apartment somewhere close and the rotten creature is now barking at the top of its wretched lungs. 

There is only one option left. John stalks back to the alley opening and presses himself up against the wall, praying for his black jacket to give him some advantage in the semidarkness. As he expected, the man following him slowly creeps closer. With the street light behind him his face remains hidden by the shadow of the hoodie but the position also makes him a clearer target. Just as the man hesitates, turning his head towards the spot where John is hiding, John clenches his teeth and bolts. 

His initial plan – to tackle the man and run, disappearing safely before his shadow gathers his feet under him enough to pursue him – is thwarted instantly when the man dodges the impact of John’s barrelling body with surprising deftness and grasps him from behind, one arm going round John’s neck and changing their momentum into a spectacular crash to the ground. They roll over several times, John trying to put the compact shape of his body to his advantage as they taught him in the Army, but this opponent clearly has some knowledge of martial arts too.  John groans as his left arm gets twisted and caught painfully under their combined weight, though the man pinning him down is thankfully as thin as a reed, all sharp joints and long bony limbs. John realizes that it’s not the rather short, burly man that used to sit at the bistro, this one _feels_ familiar and smells of – John inhales sharply, yes, it’s acetone – and following an idea that’s just too ludicrous to voice John reaches for the pocket torch with his free hand and aims a full blast of light right into the blue eyes of– 

“Bill?” 

“Shit, Doc, put it away!” Bill Wiggins scowls and lifts himself off John, pulling him up by the arm and causing another sharp twinge of pain to flare through his bad shoulder. 

“That fucking hurts!” 

“Does it now? Not so funny when someone sprains _your_ arm, eh, Doc?” 

“Hey!” John protests. “I said I was sorry!” 

“No you didn’t.” Bill pulls at the hem of his hoodie to get it straight and wipes the dirt off his jeans. “Look, Doc, better hurry up. You’re being followed.” 

“I noticed,” John grumbles, attempting to straighten his own clothes. “What are you doing here?” 

“Mr. ’olmes told me to keep an eye on... things.” 

“Things.” John shakes his head, still a bit dizzy from the fight. How many people knew about the deadly detail of Sherlock’s mission? 

“Actually it’s good to see you,” he adds. “I might need the help of the, um, Homeless Network.” He fishes out the fifty pounds. “I got the usual fee.” 

Bill snorts. “What makes you think I’m a part of that Network?” 

John has no time for patience. “Maybe because you smell like a bloody drug lab? What is it this time, meth?” 

“Maybe I smell like that because I actually _work_ in a lab,” Bill snaps. “I got a job now, I’m a chemist, remember? Mr. ’olmes arranged that for me. And I’m _clean_.” For a moment he stops on their zig-zagging route through the back streets and looks like he would like to abandon John where he is. 

“Sorry.” John means it this time. “It’s been a while. Didn’t have time to get in touch.” 

“Busy keeping an eye on the missus so she wouldn’t shoot more people?” 

“And now _you’re_ being a berk.”

 

They walk in silence for the next couple of minutes, Bill leading the way and John keeping a look-out over his shoulder. Nobody in sight.   

“That was a bloody good move you pulled on me, back there,” John offers at last. 

“Mr. ’olmes was teachin’ me. After he left, I looked up the rest on the Internet.” 

“You’ve been Youtubeing bartitsu?” 

“Problem?” Bill’s constant tetchy mode is actually a comforting reminder of the old times. 

“No, not at all,” John hastens to assure him. “It’s something Sherlock would do, actually.” 

Bill stops abruptly in front of what looks like a boarded up back door to an abandoned house. When Bill lifts up one of the boards John can see that the nails on one side are there only as a sham. They sneak through, and Bill grabs a crowbar propped against the wall inside and works the boards through the crack of the door until they fall back into place. Then he closes the door and before John has time to get out his torch in the darkness Bill flips on the light switch. The weak light of a flickering bulb fills the corridor of what is indeed an abandoned house. 

“By the way, I’m taking the money, Doc. I’m the consulting detective now and I’m charging fees.” 

John can’t hold back a laugh. “I knew this protégé thing would backfire eventually,” he mutters. Then he turns to Bill and his expression becomes serious. 

“I need to get to the Leinster Gardens bolthole.”

 

*

 

The abandoned house turns up to be an occasional squat site, currently inhabited by a group of youngsters that are none too pleased to be roused from their weed-induced slumber. Fifty pounds are put to good use and eventually one of them, a boy of shorter build and thankfully no dreadlocks on his blond head, agrees to put on John’s black jacket and take a meaningless walk towards Paddington station. 

The rest of them file out of the house in every direction and when they get back, one by one, some quarter of an hour later, they confirm to Bill and John that the area is clear. 

“It won’t take them long to spot that it’s not you, and if there are more of them and coordinated...” 

“It’s only been one at a time on me so far. Whatever they want, I’m not the top priority.” 

John smells the worn jacket of his impromptu doppelgänger and wrinkles his nose in distaste. Someone hands him a knitted cap and John puts it on quickly before he thinks too much about hair lice and other delights. They’re ready. 

They don’t talk much as they go, concentrated on scanning their surroundings and avoiding busier streets. They cut some of the distance by a convenient layout of fire escapes and rooftop crossing but mostly they keep on the ground, looking like a pair of pals on their way home from a pub. From time to time, a strange face peeks out from under a baseball cap or a hoodie, leaning out for a second from behind a corner or looking up briefly when they pass them on the pavement: a fleeting catch of eyes, a silent nod: they’re still clear. John wonders how far and how quickly his fifty pounds have spread. 

“Mr. ’olmes instructed me that no-one was allowed to stick their nose into that place.” 

“No-one but me, I guess?” 

Bill barks out a short laugh. “No-one. ’is very words. But I’m lettin’ you in anyway.” 

“Because you trust me?” That would be nice, for a change. 

“Nah, Doc. Because you don’t think he’s dead, that’s why.” Bill’s long-strided walk doesn’t falter in rhythm even when he appears to be thinking hard. 

“He must be alive,” John says with conviction. “Leaving me all those breadcrumbs, why else? He must have anticipated that I would need him – that I wouldn’t believe him dead.” 

Bill gives him a sneering half-smile. “You were ready enough to believe it the first time.” 

“He made me–” John stops himself from shouting out loud. He’s surprised how little it takes for this particular wound to re-open so easily. It’s like the sharp anger in him got hidden behind the smoke screen of necessary forgiveness and all the bewilderment of the after-wedding developments until he nearly forgot about it but it’s still there, glowing just under the surface like molten lava flowing under the thin layer of cooled-off crust, ready to spill out through the cracks any moment. 

“Easy, Doc.” Sometimes John thinks that Bill enjoys baiting him far too much. “We’re almost there.” 

They slump down onto the pavement just around the corner, their backs in the shadow of a low wall with a fence on top, and look up and down the street. It seems quiet. 

“They’ll cover for us on our way out of ’ere, don’t worry,” Bill whispers. 

“Pretty efficient Network. And there I thought you weren’t a part of it.” 

“I am the _head_ of it,” Bill corrects him, his voice rich with pride of being Sherlock Holmes’ heir. John thinks he’s just got one more reason to bring Sherlock back as soon as possible. 

 

John can’t suppress the shudder as he steps into the narrow corridor. The place feels like an ancient oracle; the cruel one where you had to pay with what was dearest to your heart for the knowledge of the future. Last time he was here, he entered as a happily married man and left with his world turned upside down. This time, he hopes for a reverse course of events. He’s entering with his world already shattered to smithereens and he hopes that this is the place he’ll start to pick up the pieces. 

They don’t dare to switch on the lights, following only the weak beam of John’s torch. Bill’s sensitive eyes are first to spot the tiny green light glowing at the far end of the corridor like an _ignis fatuus_. 

There’s a lot of things piled haphazardly on the floor where once a medical drip stand and a wheelchair stood. John sees now what ‘bolt hole’ means and how many things Sherlock must have cleared out that night before the place was ready. There is a trunk full of various items of clothes, wrapped in plastic bags to protect them from the damp. A medical kit in a dire need of restocking, carelessly folded thermal blanket, various non-perishable bars, bottled water, and – John cannot help but snigger at this – a neatly wrapped shaving kit. Sherlock might have cultivated stubble for a case but normally he was like a cat, always trim even when on the run and hiding. And amidst all that, a phone charger plugged into a socket on the wall with a phone in it. 

Irene’s camera phone. 

“Sherlock must have planted it here all those months ago,” John breathes out as he lifts the phone. “Last time I saw this, it was locked.” 

A moment later: “Damn, it still is.” 

“What’s that?” Bill comes closer and stares at the phone with interest. “This is not Mr. ’olmes’ phone. Not ’is style.” 

“It’s the Woman’s phone,” John answers absentmindedly, trying out the passcode. Sherlock told him about it, of course: about the famous dominatrix’s only mistake. He punches the SHER characters one by one and the screen lights up. In red. 

WRONG PASSCODE. 3 ATTEMPTS REMAINING 

“No shit, Sherlock,” John groans aloud. 

“Come again? What woman? You don’t _know_ the passcode, Doc?” 

“Apparently I don’t,” John grits through his teeth. “Sherlock must have changed it.” 

“Then he believed you _could_ figure it out,” Bill says with a mocking cheerfulness. “A tad too trusting I’d say but–” 

“Shut up.” Marvellously, Bill indeed does shut up and wanders down the corridor a bit, his sulk almost audible in the darkness. John ignores it for the time being, ruling out the possibilities in his mind. 

Sherlock wouldn’t have used any of the codes he tried back then; there were witnesses to some of the occasions and the lesson with the laptop taught John that Sherlock’s breadcrumbs are meant only for him. 

I AM _ _ _ _ LOCKED.

 

Codes. Clues. Disguises. “However hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait,” Irene’s voice laughs in his head.  

“It was her heart,” John can hear the soft voice of Sherlock recounting the case for him, all those years ago. “And she should never have let it rule her head.” 

“Very hard to find a pressure point on you, Mr. Holmes,” the cold, heavy-accented voice resurfaces from another part of his memory, “but look how you care about John Watson.”

 

The walls of the dark corridor feel like they’re closing up on him, constricting his breath. John doesn’t dare to look up from the phone screen, afraid that if he does he’ll see Sherlock’s face at the far end near the entrance, skin sallow and sweat glistening around the eyes blown wide with morphine. Something aches in John’s chest, a sympathetic echo of the pain Sherlock must have been in, but how come it’s John’s heart that feels heavy when Sherlock wasn’t shot anywhere near it? 

John types in the passcode and when the screen opens up, he tries very much not to think what it says about Sherlock’s heart.

 


	4. Secrets Unlocked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Chocolamousse for helping me with the French. Merci beaucoup!

There are texts. Tens, maybe hundreds of them. They started coming soon after Sherlock’s departure to Eastern Europe, according to their dates.

 

01/25 17:20 Arrived. SH 

01/27 20:20 All set. Starting tomorrow. Sending back Novak, his contacts are useless. SH

 

Some of them are just a single word, a confirmation, or a demand. Most of them are at least partially coded.

 

02/15 14:17 Aladdin out of the game. Rumoured having moved the business to I. More likely dead. SH 

02/18 05:16 Takeover at Samir’s group. Someone’s forcing a merger. SH 

03/24 12:32 Moving up the ranks. Don’t congratulate me. SH 

03/25 06:58 Relocated to B. SH

 

It takes John a while to recognise what he’s looking at: the reports on Sherlock’s progress he’s been sending to Mycroft. John wonders how Sherlock managed to get the copy of each text to be sent to a phone hidden in an abandoned house in the heart of London as well. A simple multiple recipient list would be too easily traceable. John checks the Sender numbers: each is different and far too short for it to be a working phone number – they look more like system messages. Sherlock has probably managed to sneak a virus into a local relay transmitter or some other node of the mobile telephone network. 

As he scrolls through the contents of the Inbox he notices that as the time went by the messages became more intermittent, the code becoming more intricate, often just a string of letters and numbers. It paints a picture of a noose tightening, of the ground getting hotter. There are mentions of relocations, of hasty retreats, of connections found dead and missions aborted before they could succeed. They tell an ugly story of Sherlock fighting a losing battle. 

The last few are just glimpses of Sherlock in full illegality, on the hunt and being hunted at the same time.

 

06/12 21:00 F. acquired tickets for EC174 destination date unknown confirm? SH 

06/14 03:41 Identity compromised, currently at Nagymaros-Visegrad, ETA in Brno 9:40 tomorrow SH

 

That’s where the trail ends. There are no more messages from the rest of June and the whole of July. John has a deep sinking feeling that no new message is ever likely to come. 

The air in the corridor seems to be chillier than it was before John started reading the messages. His hands are so cold that when he touches the plaster on the wall it feels warm under his fingers. It’s the wee hours of the morning, he realises; no wonder that his hands are shaking. He’s cold and drained and sick with adrenaline and his next shift at the hospital begins in three hours and why is he thinking of that? 

“Well, Doc? Found anythin’?” 

“Yep.” John weighs the possibilities. After the stunt with his double at Paddington there is no way he could go home. He’s left with what he’s got about him now. His credit card is of no use any more, the CIA might have got it traced through the system. Damn, he really should have thought this money question through before he ever started on this crusade. 

“First, I’ll need some money.” This is the embarrassing part. 

“Then lucky for _him_ that Mr. ’olmes had thought about that for you,” Bill retorts mercilessly as he upends the clothes trunk. Stuck to the bottom there is an envelope. A thick envelope. 

“I know, piss poor planning in having one’s family running away from the foreign secret service just before pay day,” John mutters but he cannot really muster the growl he wanted. There’s enough money in the envelope for a good start. 

“Second, I’ll need a passport,” John muses aloud. 

“Thought you had one. You bein’ a doctor and ex-Army and all that.” The exhaustion must be getting the better of Bill as well now. It takes him full two seconds before he exhales, _“Oh.”_  

“No worries,” John grins gleefully into the darkness. “I have my eye on one. And I’ve got...” with that he checks the time on the camera phone, “...almost two hours left before I have to dash off to St Mary’s. So if you don’t mind...” and he unwraps the blanket and settles himself down as comfortably as he can on the bare floor. 

He’s asleep before Bill can open his mouth in protest.

 

*

 

“God, Watson, you smell like shite.” 

The second half of Doctor Henderson’s complaint gets muffled through the fabric of his T-shirt as he pulls it over his head. He tosses it carelessly into his locker and puts on his white work shirt. A curious expression lights up his amiable face. 

“Been crawling through the sewers, with that detective bloke? Thought you’d given it up.” 

John is quite used to his old blog turning up to bite him in the arse from time to time. He opens the door of his own locker wide, shielding him from an accidental scrutiny of his colleague’s shrewd medical eyes, throwing the flannel he keeps there over his left shoulder. There’s a nasty bruise covering half of his upper arm, in the whole palette of blue and yellow imaginable, an annoying reminder of the quick brawl in the alley.   

“Pints with the rugby lads,” he says as he retreats to the showers. “One too many I guess and I got mugged on my way home. With the police statements and all that, didn’t have time for a shower.” 

“That’s gross,” Henderson calls after him to make himself heard over the sound of water running. John grunts a hearty agreement even when the real cause is somewhat different. He’s had enough presence of mind to shed the squatter boy’s horrendous jacket and pick up something suitable from Sherlock’s inventory of clothes back at Leinster Gardens but still the evidence of rolling around in rubbish and dirt clings to his skin together with the twenty four hours’ worth of sweat. Gross, indeed. 

There’s another reason for him to enjoy the spray of hot water on his battered shoulders. While he lingers in the shower, Henderson finishes changing into work clothes and heads upstairs. 

The changing room is empty. 

John jumps into action. 

Earlier, he slipped into the hospital through the morgue, a side entrance with a driveway for the hearses. Just like his home, the main entrance to the hospital is probably being watched by now. When the morgue attendant asked, John told him his story about being a mugging victim and that he didn’t want to feed the gossip at the reception desk. That part was easy.   

John fishes out a piece of wire and hopes that the next part will go just as smoothly.

 

*

 

“It’s not funny, Sherlock.” 

The wire slips from John’s fingers and clatters onto the tiled floor for the third time in five minutes. John grits his teeth in frustration. This lock-picking business turns up to be not as easy as it seemed when performed by the world’s only consulting detective. It doesn’t help that the said detective is now present in the form of an imaginary figure, leaning against the row of lockers with his hands stuck in the coat’s pockets, and sporting a cheeky grin. 

“You should’ve paid more attention when I taught you.” Sherlock looks like he has all the time in the world. Which he has, obviously, but it’s not the case for John. 

“You pick the locks, I cover your back, that was the agreement, remember?” John picks up the wire, makes a new loop and tries to fit it into the lock mechanism. It’s a tricky business, one has to... 

“...lift the latch lever while simultaneously pushing down the snap parts,” Sherlock recites for him. John gently rotates the wire loop in the lock mechanism, careful not to leave scratches at the outer casing, and almost feels the latch give– 

PING! 

“Of course, it’s always better to have a less springy wire _and_ a hairpin,” Sherlock adds, watching John searching for the wire under the row of lockers on the other side of the room. 

John is getting to the end of his tether. “These are fucking cheap lockers; I swear it would crack open if I kicked it, so why–” 

“You’re right.” Sherlock eyes the locks disapprovingly. “Lousy mechanism. Too much free play around the parts. How you don’t have a string of missing property cases by now is beyond me.” 

John looks down at the wire as if seeing it for the first time. “Lousy mechanism.” Slowly he pulls the key to his own locker from his trousers pocket and inserts it into Henderson’s lock. The mechanism squeaks a little and then, with a sharp _click_ , it yields. 

Sherlock’s deep laughter echoes through the changing room, feeling so real that John’s ears tingle.

 

*

 

Thomas David Henderson is a paediatrician of forty-five, with short hair flecked with grey, and if the biometric chip in his passport states that he should be two inches taller than he currently is, then John Watson hopes nobody will notice that. A week ago, Henderson returned from a conference on the recent rise of pertussis morbidity in France and his next leave is scheduled for the end of August. It doesn’t matter: Henderson not noticing the passport gone missing from his briefcase for another two or three days is everything John needs. 

Now comes the trickiest part of his plan – getting out of the hospital. For the first time in six months he regrets that he didn’t take up on the offer of a similar position at Bart’s. Molly Hooper would smuggle him out through the morgue without batting an eyelash. The morgue attendant at St Mary’s is a nice enough fellow but no particular friend of John’s. He cannot climb the yard’s wall without drawing the attention of security guys to himself. Donning a disguise and walking out of the front gate is downright ridiculous. The men John stands against are no amateurs. 

Well, there is always one option. If you cannot sneak out in secrecy, walk out in full grandeur. Sherlock used this approach from time to time, actually it was one of his favourites, and John hated it every single time. He’s going to hate himself now; but at the same time he’s experiencing something close to vicious glee as he dials the number. 

 _We aren’t detecting any higher level of terroristic activity than usual,_ that smug bastard had said. Well, here’s one for you, Mycroft, John thinks and when the operator on the 999 line replies, John announces that there’s a bomb at St Mary’s. 

They haven’t had a proper evacuation training drill in almost a year, anyway. 

Having put Irene’s old phone to one last good use, he dumps it into the hazardous waste bin. The texts are already deleted. John sees no use in keeping them. He cannot decipher the codes and he’s memorised those few that indicated Sherlock’s last known location. 

He’s fairly sure that no-one will be watching a group of patients, whose condition allows them to be evacuated on their own, enjoying an unexpected outing behind the police tape drawn across the street. Some of them have seized the opportunity and are filing in and out of the nearby tobacco shop. If one of them walks in there in a hospital gown and with a sticking plaster on his nose and leaves a couple of minutes later free of both those things, no-one is the wiser.

 

*

 

John hails a cab on Marylebone Street and in fifteen minutes he’s at St Pancras International, right in time to catch the 9:17 to Paris. He has a little time to buy a few things: a traveller’s bag, a detective novel he has no intention of reading, an overpriced bar of chocolate. As he heads for the security check, something just out of the corner of his eye makes him stop dead on the spot. One of the security cameras is following his movements. 

John swallows hard and stares the camera full on. It’s the point of no return: he cannot back off now. He knew that the information about the number the fake bomb threat was announced from would eventually get high enough in the system to be recognised as the number connected to the Belgravia affair. John knew that, in the end, Mycroft would put two and two together. He only hoped that it would take a little longer. 

Then, as if on cue, the camera swivels away and stays put in the completely opposite direction. 

John blinks and forces his feet to move. He understands the message in that silent gesture: 

 _I won’t help you, but I won’t hinder you either._   

It’s not the best he could hope to get from Mycroft, but John will take what he is offered.

 

*

 

With the hideous orange cushioning of the Class 373 train seat cradling his head, for the first time in the last twenty-four hours John has the time to close his eyes and wonder at the extent of trouble he’s brought onto himself. He already committed several crimes and he hasn’t even left English soil yet. He’s got no idea what he should be doing in Brno once he arrives there, not to mention that he doesn’t even know where that blasted place is. 

 _“Excusez-moi. Cette place est libre?”_ A melodic feminine voice reaches his brain through the mist of his gloomy reflections. John waves his hand in a polite affirmative without really opening his eyes when suddenly two completely unrelated things register with his mind. Firstly, the train booking system allocates each passenger to a seat of a given number. Secondly, he knows the perfume of this woman. John’s eyes snap open. 

On the seat opposite the little table is Mary. 

For a couple of seconds, John just stares. He feels the inertia of the train going through the bends behind his eardrums, the luxurious distant hum of wheels spinning at nearly 190 mph. His narrowed gaze takes in her appearance – new clothes, hair cropped short, some inexplicable trick with make-up that makes her face look different. Nervousness around the eyes, a slight tremble of the lips: she is unsure of her welcome. 

Somehow, that observation crumbles something hard inside of John’s heart on which a construction of dark suspicions had already started to grow, almost unnoticed by him. He only observes it now as it falls apart, in the way that he suddenly feels a good stone lighter. 

“Where’s Emma?” 

Mary exhales, a relieved, yet still guarded smile fleeting on her face. “Good to see you _too_.” She settles more comfortably in her seat. John only lifts his eyebrows. 

“She’s safe,” Mary says, face serious and voice firm even when she’s keeping it casually low. “She’s with a family I trust.” 

“Mary,” John is still not smiling and he knows that Mary knows it’s a good sign because he’s angry, he’s got every right to be, and when he last smiled this angrily, it was before he kicked a chair across a room. “Mary, you trust nobody.” 

“Point in their favour,” she agrees. 

“So...” John looks around. They are alone in this part of the carriage. “What are we doing here?” 

“You? Going to find Sherlock. Me? Much the same.” 

John can see how her shrewdness allowed her to arrive at the first conclusion of her statement, but he fails entirely at understanding the second. “Why should you?” 

She sighs. And again. She doesn’t look at John when she finally answers: “Because, if I’m not very much mistaken, he’s the one who gave me away.” 

John leans forward, his anger changing tracks. “He wouldn’t. He vowed to be there for us – me, _you_ , and Emma. It’s because of _you_ he is where he is.” 

“Hardly because of– oh, never mind.” Her temper flares and is extinguished again in seconds; excellent self-control. She continues carefully. 

“How would you explain the coincidence, then? He was meant to return in six months. And instead of him coming back, there’s suddenly CIA breathing down my neck. It looks pretty clear to me. He was caught, and in exchange for whatever, he gave me away.” 

John just looks at her, face closed off. When he’s finally not afraid that he’ll shout once he opens his mouth, he asks: 

“Even if he did, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be off somewhere, acquiring a new identity?” 

She looks up sharply as if he hit her. Then she lowers her eyes again. 

“I guess I’ve got a debt to pay off.” 

John shakes his head. “I won’t work with that, Mary. I can’t. You’re... you _must_ be better than that.” 

She returns his gaze, shame and stubbornness fighting for dominance behind those clear eyes. Then she huffs out a short, bitter laugh. 

“John Watson, always making people into heroes ’til they become one. You’re right, okay? I came because he’s your friend. And mine.”

 


	5. Train Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More thanks to Chocolamousse for the French.  
> EDIT: And also thank her for spotting a mistake that arose because of miscommunication on my side. French ain't easy:)

They’re in the Eurotunnel now. The English Channel is rarely serene, rolling waves angry at being forced to go through a strait, but deep under layers of sand and rock and concrete the train swishes on smoothly, never losing a beat. John watches his wife devouring the chocolate bar he bought on the station and thinks of the past day, of the two biscuits he managed to snatch from Mrs. Hudson’s tea tray and of the stale sandwich from Tesco’s. How much time for eating has Mary had? 

He looks out of the window even though there’s nothing to be seen, the walls of the tunnel a continual darkness slashed with regular flares of lights on the emergency escapes. 

“There’s one thing I still don’t understand.” 

Sherlock, draped gracelessly over two seats across the aisle and seen only by John in the reflection on the window, rolls his eyes heavenwards. “You know, in that one aspect Magnussen was completely right. You really should put that on a–”  

“What’s that?” Mary disrupts this imagination, thankfully before John can embarrass himself by telling a man who isn’t there to piss off. She licks the last bit of chocolate off the corner of her mouth and John thinks that they probably look as if they’re a couple on a weekend trip to the world’s capital of romance, looking forward to some sightseeing, a fine dinner, and lots of sex. And wouldn’t it be just lovely? 

“What’s the CIA got to do with it? I know how they’re involved with you–” he lifts his hand and Mary swallows whatever she wanted to interrupt with, “–but how are they related to Sherlock’s mission? I just don’t see the connection there.” 

Mary folds the chocolate wrapping into a neat square. She seems at a loss what words to choose. She finally settles for: “It’s a long story.” 

“We’ve got time.” 

She nods, a bit resigned, but at the same time with a determined motion. She keeps her voice low and tone distant, reciting the words as if she was reading them from a file. 

“It all started seven years ago, while I was still with the CIA. I was a field agent, operative for Eastern Europe. You wouldn’t have recognised me if you met me – I was a stone lighter, had chestnut curls coming down past the shoulders, and I spoke fluent Hungarian.” She quirks a little smile at the memory. 

“I’m not sure I want to hear about–” John puts in but she shakes her head. 

“You have to. I wish – even though I didn’t at the time – that you’d have read the memory stick. You chose not to, you didn’t want to know my past, but I could see it was eating you up. It’s been destroying us, John.” 

She holds his gaze, insistent, and he knows she’s right. 

“You’d close yourself off in the work, taking the extra shifts even if you didn’t have to... You’ve been a shadow of yourself lately, and it was killing me. This–” and she points a finger between the two of them, encompassing the carriage, their narrow escape, the mad hunt for clues in the gesture, “–this is what _we are_. There is no use denying it, John.” 

“I forgave you.” 

She touches his hand on the table. “But you never got over it. You don’t let go of things easily, John, I know that. It’s very hard to obtain full forgiveness from John Watson – look at me, I’m already standing in the queue.” 

Sherlock in the window reflection doesn’t meet John’s eyes. 

“Go on, then,” John manages after a moment. This – all this cards on the table business – takes a while to get accustomed to. Then he smiles. “Hungarian?” 

“Annamária Gizella Renáta Andrássy,” she spills out in one breath. “I was born American; my parents came from Hungary.” 

“Annamária,” John repeats, a bit overwhelmed by the whole lot of it. 

“Getting used to Mary wasn’t such a stretch,” she shrugs. “After I got recruited and trained, they selected me for an undercover mission on Balkan. My parents were already dead, there was nobody and nothing in my life– I accepted it. 

“It was a crime syndicate, of sorts. Human trafficking, protection racket, smuggling – all rather local at first, but they got our attention when they tried to go transnational and supply heroin into the States. It indicated that they’d became a part of something bigger, that they were getting orders from someone higher up the power ladder–” 

“Moriarty,” John finishes for her. 

“I never found out,” she says, uncertain. “From my position inside, it wasn’t possible to get a clear look at the top.” 

“So, what went wrong?” 

She bites her lip. “I did.” 

John keeps his eyes fixed on their reflection in the window. 

“There was a lot of money, you know? And I had nobody to tell me– Just. I took the money. I switched sides. Went double, fed the CIA with fabricated information and worked for the gang. I wasn’t exactly a nice girl... yes. I did a lot of bad things for the money. 

“It all went very pear-shaped very quickly, of course,” she wrinkles her nose as if disappointed with her own stupidity. 

“I never knew what happened first – someone tried to take over the group I was in and the CIA got wise to what I’d been doing. Suddenly I was in the crossfire. My new ‘family’–” she curls her lips around the word with disdain, “–went all paranoid about me because of the take-over, and the rats were leaving the sinking ship anyway. I didn’t wait for the court-martial either. Packed my clobber and made myself scarce. Mary Morstan is the rest.” 

John sorts through the information he’s just got. “So if Moriarty took over that Balkan group, and it became a part of his global network...” 

“It could be him,” Mary muses. “But we – I – never saw them. Always a distorted voice on the phone or a text message from an anonymous Skype account. Never a face.” 

“Sherlock was in Serbia, did you know?” John remembers those days after their reunion. After much not-talking he had eventually got to hear some stories from Sherlock’s time away. 

“It was where Mycroft extracted him from,” Mary nods. “He got caught there. Are you so sure it couldn’t have happened again? I’ve never met them, but I got the impression that whoever organised the take-over, they were very clever.” She can’t find any more precise words to describe them and John sees that it upsets her. Mary likes to keep a good track on things, she sees uncertainty as a failure. 

“It’s only my guess, but I think that among the information Sherlock collected there the first time, there was something on me. God knows that some people there would give their left kidney to see me dead. Sherlock would know only the name, the initials AGRA – he couldn’t have made the connection when he met me after his return. Then Magnussen happened and...” 

“Sherlock protected you,” John points out, again. 

“And his brother?” 

John winces; Mary might have a point here. She continues: “Mycroft could have waited for six months, whether it was a time he appointed for Sherlock or if Sherlock simply stopped checking in after that, I don’t know. And then, when he believed Sherlock was lost, I think he simply handed my file over to the CIA.” 

It sounds cold. But then, so is Mycroft Holmes.

 

*

 

“How did you get past passport control?” Mary asks with undisguised curiosity, once John finishes recounting his own escapades and the contents of the texts on Irene’s phone. 

“How did _you_?” John smiles. She nods, all business-like, but the corners of her eyes are smiling too with pleased satisfaction. She sees the sparks in her eyes reflected in John’s, alive and shining with anticipation. He’s not in his element, he’s been trained for different warzones; but together, they can make it work. 

“We’ll be needing new IDs, then. There’s a place...”

 

*

 

An hour later, and after several mystifying turns in the labyrinth of streets around an old church not far from Gare Du Nord, John finds himself standing in front of a rather shabby print shop. 

“Go in and ask for Henri,” Mary instructs him, then turns on her heel and rounds the corner of the building. There’s a narrow lane leading behind the shops, almost entirely blocked by compressed carton boxes and empty printer cartridges. 

“I’m not sure my French will manage,” John calls out after her. She just waves a hand. 

“Don’t worry. He won’t talk to you.” 

John does as he’s told. The girl at the shop desk is rather unimpressed with his attempt at French but as soon as the name Henri leaves his lips, the response is immediate. 

 _“Putain de merde!”_ A high-pitched man’s voice explodes in the back office and then a door slams shut. Distant sound of stacks of paper falling to the ground, squeak of a window, and John is already on his way out of the shop. As he enters the back lane, he’s not surprised at the sight which greets him. Mary is holding a violently struggling boy of no more than twenty-five in a headlock. The boy’s feet are kicking around uselessly and he’s firing off a constant stream of rich sounding words. 

_“Lâche-moi, connasse_ _!”_

“Now, now, Henri,” Mary shushes him. “Is this how you welcome an old friend? A friend to whom you owe a favour?” 

_“J’en ai rien_ _à foutre!_ _”_

A roll of banknotes lands at the boy’s feet. The kicking stops. 

“I’m listening,” he says in surprisingly intelligible English. 

“That’s my boy.” Mary releases him. He’s about an inch shorter than her, thin as a rake, with nervous hands and shifty eyes behind a pair of glasses that are currently hanging from one of his protruding ears. He straightens them back onto his nose and gives Mary a good once–over. 

“Well, you look awfully good for a corpse, _Annemarie_.” He flashes her a crooked grin, then shoots John a suspicious glance and quickly bends to retrieve the money. 

“It seems that the rumours of your – eh, demise – have been greatly exaggerated,” he continues. 

Mary smiles sweetly. “And I’ll be much obliged to you if they remain just like that.” 

Henri skims his fingertips over the banknotes, counting them in one swift move. “Another two thousand might do the trick,” he proposes. 

John takes a step closer, one hand pointedly reaching under his jacket. His face is set in stone and Mary has to look away to conceal a smirk. 

“Or not,” the boy agrees quickly, raising both hands in a placating gesture. “I’m just fine.” 

“Fine,” John confirms and puts his hand back in his pocket, keeping his jacket closed so that Henri can’t see that he doesn’t have a gun at all.

 

*

 

Two hours later, they are presented with two driving licence cards. Following Mary’s instructions, Henri kept their British citizenships but changed the names. 

“James Waters?” John lifts his eyebrows at his wife who now passes under the name of Anne. 

“Better keep it close to your real name.” Mary sits on the only chair in the basement printer room that isn’t buried in an avalanche of paper debris, and nurses a cup of coffee that could very well be brewed from the ink cartridges. 

“If someone suddenly wakes you in the middle of the night and yells at you to give your name, you’d probably blurt out ‘Wat–’ before you’d catch yourself,” Mary continues mercilessly. “With Waters, you can pretend that you stammer.” 

“I’m not that terrible a liar,” John protests. 

“Yes, you are.” He gets a double answer, from both his wife and an imaginary Sherlock who’s currently leaning over the intricate forger printer machine and smiling to himself like a contented cat. 

John decides that, ink or not, he needs a coffee.

 

*

 

The quickest way to get from Paris to Sherlock’s last known location is by plane. They rule out that one straight away because of Mary’s gun. It’s a Walther PPK, easily concealable under plainclothes but still impossible to pass unheeded through an airport security check. It’s a small wonder Mary got it past the check on boarding the Eurostar. But then she knows tricks that John doesn’t want to know about. 

The easiest way is by coach but the tickets are reserved on a name, and even though their new IDs are enough to satisfy, they agree to leave as little of an electronic track in the systems as possible. 

Train reservations, on the other hand, are registered only on the numbers of ticket bought. The connection, however, is ghastly. John can’t shake off an uneasy feeling when he realises that they’ll have to change three times and cross three borders. 

“It’s okay,” Mary assures him. “It’s one of the good things on the Continent – that it’s a free ride across the most of it. The Schengen Area at least.” 

It’s nearly romantic and definitely comfortable – the almost silent TGVs with their anatomical seats and air-conditioned carriages, and the bunks of the EuroNight sleeper they catch in Munich – but it’s also awfully expensive. Fortunately, money is the last thing they are short of. The stash of Sherlock’s money from Leinster Gardens is wearing thin but Mary must have emptied the vault in some bolthole of her own.  

There are other things they miss. Terribly. 

 

It happens in Stuttgart. They only have seven minutes to find the right platform and catch the Intercity Express, already full of Berliners. The shiny new underground station for transit lines is chilly despite the warm August evening but not so cold that they should be freezing. Yet there Mary stands, frozen to the spot, eyes glued to the inside of a pushchair that a couple of parents have just carried out of one carriage, overly careful and still a bit clumsy on the steep boarding steps. Young couple with their firstborn. 

 _“Schläft sie noch net?”_ The father asks as he busies himself with their other luggage, a hint of tiredness in his voice that John recognises painfully clearly. 

 _“Doch,”_ the mother says in an affectionate tone, noticing Mary’s fixation and turning to her with a proud smile.  

The baby inside is about three or four months old, rosy baby cap tied firmly under chubby little cheeks, tiny fingers clutched into fists. She’s fast asleep. Mary cannot tear her eyes off her. 

John touches her arm. “We’ve got to go, love.” Their connection is already pulling up at the platform. Finally, Mary sets in motion, but she’s not really walking; she’s putting one foot before the other like a machine. 

John doesn’t ask her if it hurts. Sometimes, even he knows the obvious when he sees it, and the crippling pain around his own heart is a good sample for comparison. When they settle in their seats, he notices the way Mary’s holding her arms crossed around her chest. 

She’s masking the two patches of wetness that have seeped through the shirt over her breasts.

 

John should have thought of this sooner. Emma only started on complementary food about a fortnight ago. Even after the adventurous last day, the strain on their physique, the less than satisfactory nourishment – Mary’s body is still ready to feed the baby, and after the long separation the slightest trigger in the form of seeing another baby can provoke the reaction. 

“Does it hurt?” John asks now and he’s relieved that he’s got a physical excuse for this question. The unused milk accumulated in her breasts must hurt. 

“Not much,” Mary stirs in her seat, pulling at the soaked fabric of her shirt that is now getting uncomfortably cold. 

“Not sure where I can get hold of antibiotics if you get an inflammation.” 

“It’s okay.” 

John knows she’s probably right – the milk will go away eventually – but it doesn’t feel like it. There are lines of worry around her wide eyes as she stares out of the window unseeingly. 

They won’t have any news on Emma. Mary purposefully severed every connection between herself and the temporary foster family she’s left Emma with. It’s safer that way, for both of them. 

“We _are_ coming back for her, Mary.” John voices this aloud probably more for his own benefit than for hers. 

Her mouth does a strange thing. It aims for a smile but misses the mark by a mile.  

“I wouldn’t have come if we weren’t,” she says quietly. “It’s just... she’s so small, I feel I’m losing something every minute I’m not with her.” 

Mary will lose the milk by the time they come back, that’s for sure.

 

John would like to say something, something expected of him, something comforting or at least mood-enlightening, but he can’t. He feels bereft; not only of his daughter, but also of something he actually never had – of the depth of love and connection that existed between Mary and Emma. He’s jealous and he can’t help it, the way he resents the fact that Mary had the opportunity to memorise the face of their daughter when she left her, that she had a moment to kiss her goodbye, while John was robbed of her suddenly and unexpectedly. He didn’t know that it could be the last moment he saw his daughter when he left home that morning – Emma was crying, her face nothing but a red mouth with swollen gums, a noodle of snot running down her nose. It just isn’t fair, and when did love become so complicated? 

Probably when Mary shot Sherlock, and everything went downhill from there. 

Sherlock yawns from across the aisle where he sits next to a Japanese tourist. The small man is asleep, squeezed in his seat at the window with his head lolling towards the glass, and the imaginary Sherlock takes advantage of the extra space to accommodate his whole gangly self, coat included.  

“Don’t be silly, John. It started–” another yawn, “–so much earlier.” 

“Yeah? Maybe when you decided to jump off a roof and let me think you were dead for two years,” John shoots back without really thinking. He’s instantly aware he’s said that aloud and wishes briefly for the ground to open and swallow him up. 

Mary doesn’t react. She has slumped a bit in her seat and is now asleep too. A quick check around reveals that pretty much everyone in the carriage has already succumbed to slumber. It’s past nine pm, no wonder. Sherlock yawns again. Maybe John’s subconscious is trying to tell him something. 

“I’d say much earlier than that,” Sherlock muses. “Do you remember the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever done?” 

“After invading Afghanistan?” John chuckles, carrying on the conversation in his head again. Does Sherlock really think that all John’s troubles started the day the two of them met? 

Maybe they started the day John was born, who knows. Maybe he was always meant for trouble, mayhem, pain and misfortune. But it’s not the line of thought he’d like to pursue right now. Not when he notices the look Sherlock is giving Mary – a cold assessment, a detached calculation. 

“What?” 

“Are you aware she’s a liability?” Sherlock says quietly. “I can’t predict her. If she was only protecting herself – or her position with you – I could rely on knowing what she’d do. Now it’s – different. She _loves_ Emma, and love is–” 

“Sherlock, if you utter one word about _human error_ , I swear I’ll throw you out of the window.” 

Sherlock smirks, the imaginary bastard that he is. Belatedly John notices that the windows in the Intercity Express can’t open. Well, there goes another satisfactory scenario.

 

John stretches his legs under the seat in front of him. There’s one thing he’s been afraid to ask – now is as good a time as any. 

“Are you dead?” 

Sherlock lifts a quizzical eyebrow. “Are you afraid you’re seeing ghosts?” 

“One ghost,” John corrects him. “It’s just... this never happened before. Me, imagining you. I bet _you_ ’ve got me inside your Mind Palace, since you used to talk to me while I was away from home, but I... this is new.” 

“It’s an understandable concern,” the detective nods, and John wonders if Sherlock’s seriousness is supposed to mock him. 

“But I’d think that I am merely a projection, created by you to be able to voice thoughts you’re so fond of ignoring otherwise.” 

“I’m pretty sure I’m not suppressing a wish to be insulted by nearly everything you say,” John grumbles and then yawns as well. 

“You should get some sleep, John. Your next change is in two hours.” Sherlock reaches across the aisle and pats him gently on the arm. As John falls asleep, it occurs to him that such uncharacteristic display of affection is definite proof that his ‘seeing ghosts’ theory is wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translation of the German conversation:
> 
>  _Schläft sie noch net?_ \- Schwäbish (German dialect used around Stuttgart): Is she still not asleep?
> 
>  _Doch._ \- But yes.


	6. Changes of Luck

When John thinks about it later, it’s clear that they should have split up long before Vienna. In Munich, preferably; before they boarded the EuroNighter (where John couldn’t get any sleep anyway and spent the night reading railway brochures about Vienna, Brno, and Budapest – what a waste of time). At least he should have got off the train in Vienna and tried to cross the green border to the Czech Republic on his own while Mary continued to Budapest to obscure their trail and rejoined him later. 

But hindsight is always twenty-twenty, as they say. After all, the enemy has made one mistake as well. One of the four men, positioned inconspicuously among the few dozing passengers in the waiting room of Meidling station, is a man whose face Mary recognises from her CIA days. 

It’s six o’clock in the morning and Meidling’s rush hour is yet to come; now the station is quiet save for the passing goods trains, and cold with the draught of damp morning air between the stone-faced corridor walls and glass elevators. The platforms are nothing but an open empty space, the ground level facilities all modern minimalist lines and right angles: there’s nowhere to hide. 

Mary stops them before she and John enter the waiting room, but it’s already too late. John spots the other three in a fraction of second: it’s the way they sit, leaning against the backrests of the benches a tiny bit stiffly – to accommodate the gun in the shoulder holster. Through the glass sliding door they can see the team leader startling only a little when he realises that he’s been recognised. Then he inclines his head and he’s saying something, probably into a two-way radio in his earpiece. The other three lift their heads and their muscles tighten, hands sliding under their jackets. Out of the corner of his eye, John catches a silhouette appearing in the station entrance. For a second, everything is still and quiet save for the distant rumble of the goods wagons above their heads. 

Then Mary bolts. Not for the arch of light coming from the sleepy street behind the entrance, but for the elevator they’ve exited just a moment ago. John is one step behind her, providing cover like he did countless times before, only now he’s not running in dust and scorching sunlight between battered concrete walls – now he’s sliding along black polished stone that can make the bullets ricochet like peas. He’s sure the men won’t draw their guns and fire; they would hit each other sooner than scratch him or Mary. The elevator door whooshes closed behind them and the safety glass cracks a bit under the banging of a gunstock as one of the men behind them is just two seconds too late. The others are heading for the emergency staircase. 

The thundering of heavy laden wagons rushing past at 50 mph is almost deafening when the elevator pulls up to the platform level. It tells John enough to understand what they are about to do, once the elevator door opens again on the lifeless platform. There’s one track between them and the goods train; they jump down the high edge, land in the gravel between the sleepers and Mary stumbles. Something pings off the rail just besides John’s right foot – a bullet he couldn’t hear being fired because of the roaring of the train. The noise is everywhere now, painful to his ears, shattering his balance, overwhelming in such dangerous proximity. 

The rear end of one wagon is approaching him fast; if he’s not careful the step irons will mash his head to a pulp. He feels the impact of Mary’s weight on him, shoving him forward – when did she lag a step behind? – and John grabs the irons and shouts in pain when the speed of the train yanks him off his feet and the jerk nearly dislocates his shoulder. His legs drag in the gravel for a horrible moment, Mary clinging to his waist like a dead weight, before he manages to haul himself up to get a grip with his other hand. His feet scramble to get a purchase on the underframe, he lifts their combined weight another half meter higher, and then Mary is groaning with effort behind him and using him as a ladder, climbing up his back. The travel bag she’s carrying swings from her shoulder and hits John squarely in the face, he drops the hard–won half meter back and then, at last, Mary grabs him under his arm and drags him back up. The train has rounded a gentle bend since it left the station area; they’re out of line for a clear shot now. John climbs the rest of the ladder and collapses beside her on the wagon top.

 

John feels something clammy on his palm from where he touched the last rung. He wipes his hand on his trousers before he notices that the smear is not dew or grease – it’s red and still a bit warm. 

“Christ, Mary–” 

“It’s only a graze.” 

She’s pressing both hands to her side where her shirt is torn and soaked with blood. John curses himself ten times over. What kind of a commander is he when he allows his men to fall behind – when he doesn’t even notice them getting shot?  

“Stop it,” she reprimands him as if she knows what’s going on in his head. John pulls her closer to inspect the wound. She is right – it’s only a graze, bleeding more than John would like but not too serious. He helps Mary to tear off the rest of her ruined shirt and uses it as a makeshift bandage. Then he throws his jacket over her back and cuddles her in his arms.

 

The train rocks and rumbles on the rails, the rhythmic motion calming John down. A thick, sweetish smell that reminds him of the granary at his Granddad’s farm fills his nose. He realises that they’ve hopped onto a harvested corn transport. They are cruising the land sitting atop some thousand tons of cereals. John fights the urge to laugh, the comedown from the adrenaline high getting the better of him. 

“Stupid, stupid,” Mary mutters under her breath next to him. 

“What do we do now?” John looks around. They are passing suburban clusters of catalogue-type built family houses, with hedged backyards the size of napkins and kitschy oriels in the steep roofs reflecting the morning sun. 

Mary points ahead of them. There’s a garden colony– slices of land separated by wire fences, rectangular vegetable beds and trained apple trees everywhere. The allotments almost reach the railway embankment. Everything is still quiet there, no early rising gardener in sight. 

She’s right, they have to leave the train, and the sooner the better. This iron leviathan of some thirty odd wagons and two engines is not something to be stopped easily – it would probably take a mile for the train to brake to a halt – but the CIA might be determined to try it. Not to mention that they could be determined enough to have a helicopter at hand.

 

“How did they find us?” John asks after he catches his breath again and shakes the grass clippings out of his hair. He managed to ride out most of the momentum after jumping off the train in a series of rolls but his ankle still twitches with pain. Negligible, though. Mary is worse off, her face scrunched up in discomfort and the graze wound probably bleeding anew. He helps her to her feet. 

She shrugs. “Facial recognition software on the security videos from stations, I’d say. If they had easy access to those videos – which I hoped they wouldn’t. Europe is not the CIA’s playground, they don’t get a free hand here.” 

“It surprised me that they were actually shooting at us,” John admits. 

“Not a kill shot,” Mary says by way of explanation. “Aimed at the legs. Only I stumbled.” 

John elbows out a dirty pane on the rear window of a garden shed and opens the latch. Inside, Mary picks up a faded flannel shirt and John rummages around for a first-aid kit. “Damn, what do these people do when they cut themselves with a hedge trimmer?” he complains when he can’t find any. 

“It’s okay,” Mary assures him again. “Drop it, we have to move.” 

Moderately presentable, they walk side by side through the natty streets of this sugar candy neighbourhood. The steadily rising trickle of people on their way to jobs and schools guides them to the busy district centre from where a tram leaves for the city every ten minutes.

 

“We have to split up.” Mary breaches the subject once they are standing on the tramcar’s rear platform, their voices drowned sufficiently in the horrible squeaks and grinds the ancient vehicle is making. 

“I can’t leave you now,” John objects but she puts a finger across his lips. 

“I’ve had worse. And I have contacts in this city, places to hide in. We’ll be too easily spotted together. You can merge in the crowd and hide in plain sight to an extent but you have to be quick, stay one step ahead of them. There are plenty of destinations to go to from Meidling, they don’t know where we’ve been heading.” 

“So you’re saying I should put on a pair of sunglasses and buy a train ticket to Brno from some other station?” 

“Actually, I thought a fake moustache would do the trick. It ages you terribly,” she winks and John rolls his eyes. He’s never going to live it down. 

“You go to Hauptbahnhof. It’s a busy place, you can slip under their noses. There’s a Eurocity leaving every two hours, you’ll be in Brno in ninety minutes.” 

Mary looks around, scanning the streets for signs of danger. Before she alights from the tramcar, she turns to John and gives him a peck on the cheek. 

“Give me three days and then meet me in Brno.” 

“Where? That damned place has a population of four hundred bloody thousand!” John’s been on a few blind dates but never has he been so blind about the place to meet as well. 

“At the highest point.” Mary flashes him a grin. “There’s bound to be only one.”

 

*

 

Hide in plain sight. That’s easier said than done, John thinks as he loiters around Hauptbahnhof and tries to find relief from the noon sun in the half-shade of the glass panelled walls that are radiating heat in waves. The traffic on the adjoining street reminds him of a swarming anthill, exhaust gases and noise a constant background. He’s having a hard time getting used to the cars driving on the right – twice he nearly got run over by a car on the ridiculously small parking place in front of the station, not to mention the close shave with a minibus of the S-lines running between Vienna International Airport and main stations. 

John suspects that the station is under close surveillance. Mary was right when she said that Meidling was a large interchange station but John knows the CIA can do their maths. From the route they’ve taken up to now, the CIA could infer that they definitely aren’t heading west or south. The number of remaining destinations is limited and John is sure that all possible north– and eastwards exit points from Vienna are already guarded.

The station concourse is a lively place, buzzing with a cacophony of languages. Several street musicians guarding their claim in the corners are contributing their fiddling to the chaos reigning all over the place. Little energetic children weave their way through the crowd, playing tag while their parents rest on the benches or atop their luggage. John walks up the steps to the hall from where the trains on the old _Nordbahn,_ the North Line, are dispatched, his eyes skimming over the crowd in search of the tell-tale wrinkles on men’s jackets or the characteristic bearing of the shoulders – the evidence of a hidden gun. He’s alert and ready to bolt at the first sign of danger and that’s why it comes as a complete surprise when he feels an odd tug at the back of his jeans – then a shove in his knees, as if some child tripped over their feet and grabbed at John for support – and when he turns around, he only catches the back of a boy’s ruffled head disappearing in the crowd. 

His back trouser pocket is cut clean with a razor and his wallet – his wallet, where he kept the fake ID and all his cash – is gone. Suddenly he understands all too well the meaning of the ever-present signs: _Vor den Taschendieben wird gewarnt – Beware of Pickpockets._ And just like that, he finds himself thrown off the rails before his mission to save Sherlock can ever really begin, alone in the middle of a foreign capital – and he can’t very well go find the nearest police constable and report the theft, can he now? 

Well, desperate times call for desperate measures. After all, the kid just demonstrated to him all too clearly how it’s done. You’ve got to move naturally, you’ve got to be quick, and above all, you’ve got to _dare_. 

John turns on his heel and walks back down the steps into the main concourse. On his way up, he noticed in passing a group of three ticket collectors gathered around the drinks vending machine. They’re still there, trying to convince the thing to accept a Euro coin that keeps falling through, their attention fixed on the alluring promise of a cold beverage. The air inside the crowded steel-and-glass hall is uncomfortably hot, and two of the guards have already shed their blue uniform jackets and service caps and thrown them onto a nearby bench. 

John walks around them and without missing a beat he dons one of the caps, swings one of the jackets over his shoulder and continues in his original direction to the platforms, shrugging the jacket on and buttoning himself up as he walks. The guards are still laughing at the stubbornness of the vending machine. Nobody noticed a thing.

 

As John climbs the steps of the Eurocity line heading for Prague via Brno, he catches a glimpse of a CIA agent hanging around the front end of the platform, eyeing every passing person inconspicuously. The agent never once looked at John, even though his blue jeans have seen better days and certainly couldn’t pass for respectable uniform trousers. It must be the hat, John chuckles to himself, and disposes of both incriminating items of clothing before he stumbles upon a real ticket collector. 

Actually, the ticket collector _could_ pose a problem. During his ‘board-the-train-under-the-CIA’s-nose’ coup John naturally skipped the purchase of tickets, mainly because he didn’t have the money to purchase them in the first, of course. 

The train is due to leave in a couple of minutes and John notices the blue uniform appearing at the platform. The guard shakes hands with the dispatcher and climbs the steps at the front end of the first carriage. About nine carriages away from John’s. 

Well. John’s been across two borders by train already. He knows that on every new sovereign territory, a new train staff is employed. The route itinerary states that it only takes an hour to arrive at the first stop on the Czech side of the border. John sets about putting as much distance between himself and the only ticket collector aboard as possible. It will take a while to check ten crowded carriages, and John counts on that. 

In Břeclav, the Austrian staff alights and Czech staff takes their place. The new ticket collector starts his round at the rear carriage. John smirks and moves again, crossing from one carriage to another through the narrow communicating doors, this time moving forward. When he sets foot on the platform in Brno some thirty minutes later, it’s long before the guard could ever get to him.

 

All he has to do now is to survive three days in a foreign city without a cent in his pocket. 


	7. It Takes a Doctor

John wakes up to a faceful of bright light. His sleep-glued eyelids crack open a fraction and immediately he scrunches his face against the glaring sun. The wooden bench spokes are exacting revenge on his ribs for having slept ’til high noon, and he’s sure there can’t be any seagulls in this Middle European city and so why there is the unmistakable white stain on his jacket sleeve? 

Oh yes. The pigeon cooing on the plane tree right above John’s bench looks guilty enough. 

John rolls over, groaning, and sits up. Something makes a crunching sound in his jacket pocket. He pats it and finds the remnants of a tuna sandwich. Memories from last night connect with the sour taste of fish in his mouth and John drops his face into both of his hands.

 

*

 

The city of Brno is a strange mix of old-world charm and modern-day nihilism – at least so it appears to John on his first day on its streets. The downtown looks like a patchwork, put together without any concept – beautifully restored historical buildings next to the ultramodern facades of shopping centres, sumptuous interlocked paved pathways lining the bumpy tarmac roads littered with cigarette stubs, chewing gum and dog poo. The brochures John finds in a Tourist Information point tell him that Brno is a university city, which explains why it looks so empty of youth now, so close to the end of July. Unfortunately, said brochures are silent on the subject of the highest geographical peak. John doesn’t think of it as a problem at first – it should be enough to take every street that leads uphill until there aren’t any more to take – but he soon realises the fault of his plan. The city seems to resemble ancient Rome, built on the slopes of seven hills, and there is virtually no street running horizontal. Even the central square slants southwards. On the first day, John climbs a central hill crowned with a gothic dome, then a hill sprawled over by a park with a fortress at the top, both promontories separated only by a chasm of one busy street, and then a more remote hill with an observatory, and he’s not a metre closer to the riddle’s solution. 

He tries asking people but they only smile apologetically when they hear English. Elderly people try back with Russian but their effort is lost on him. If he had access to the Internet, it would be a matter of three seconds and two clicks, but it’s Saturday and public libraries are closed, and his old iPhone capable of catching free wi-fi from one of the cafés on the main boulevard is currently buried in a heap of flour. 

At the end of his first day, the only result and observation occupying the forefront of John’s mind is a rather obsessive hunger. He hasn’t eaten anything since Munich, more than twenty-four hours ago. 

It can’t be helped – he’ll have to go and take a chance at the Tesco he’s discovered near the station. The idea of stealing something to eat makes his skin prickle. It was different taking his colleague’s passport when he had every intention of making it up to Henderson once he came back. The theft of the guard uniform in Vienna was a spur of the moment decision and dictated by a dire need. This, on the other hand...

 

It’s after nightfall when John wanders back to the station. In front of it, the three island platforms for tram lines are sandwiched with puffing buses of the night lines, lined up for a coordinated take-off every hour. It’s a fascinating theatre: the buses pull up from every direction, spill out all the passengers at once, and for a couple of minutes the platforms are swarming with people searching for their next connection, then the buses huff off and the place falls into silence again, interrupted only by the occasional passing drunkard. 

One of these drunks appears at the top of the subway staircase and nearly bumps into John, staggering on their feet and fighting a losing battle with gravity. John reflexively turns around and catches the person by the elbow; he now realises that the drunkard is a girl, a skinny dark-haired twenty-something creature. She tries to focus her dizzy eyes on John and slurs something incomprehensible. John’s stomach turns in repulsion: seeing such a young girl this pissed reminds him too much of Harry. He grabs her none too gently and helps her stumble to the nearest bench and she collapses onto it, head hanging between her knees. John takes a step back in case she throws up. Her limp arm slides between his fingers until he’s holding her by the wrist, feeling her pulse flutter under his fingers like a frightened rabbit’s. 

That makes John pause. Elevated pulse is a reaction to adrenaline, not alcohol. He takes a closer look at the girl. She’s shivering despite the warm summer night, whole-body shudders that make her teeth chatter. Her hair is plastered to her brow and there are large wet patches on the back of her neck and under her armpits. She’s pale, and when John lifts her face to the light of the nearby lamp post he can see that her pupils are enormous. She lets him touch her head without protest and when he releases her, she keeps nodding her head, slumping and trying to straighten again like an automaton. 

She doesn’t smell of alcohol in the slightest. 

John recounts the symptoms. Shakiness, tachycardia, pallor, excessive sweating, dilated pupils, apathy, automatic behaviour, uncoordination, and slurred speech: all signs of a severe hypoglycaemia. He quickly searches the small bag dangling from her shoulder. If she’s a diabetic taking insulin regularly... Yes, there it is: a digital glucose meter. John pricks the tip of her finger and squints to get a reading in the low light. Less than 40 mg/dL. Shit. John knows that digital glucose meters often give misleading results for diabetics, reading lower values than those returned by a laboratory test, but this girl is clearly only minutes from permanent brain damage. He rummages through the handbag, hoping that she is a conscientious enough diabetic to always carry with her – yes. Three sugar cubes in a little plastic box. 

John forces the cubes between her teeth one at a time, and makes sure she swallows them. Once it’s done, the recovery is usually a matter of minutes. The girl has already stopped shaking and some lucidity has returned into her eyes, still drowsy but getting better by the second. 

John shakes his head at her. To get into this state she must have overlooked the first warning signs. Hypoglycaemia unawareness happens, especially with diabetics; the brain gets used to low sugar levels and doesn’t engage its rescue mechanisms until it’s too late, but a girl this thin, awake and up this late at night – it is reckless of her, at best. She is lucky John is a doctor and recognised the symptoms; in any other circumstances, she could easily have been mistaken for a helpless drunkard, got mugged... 

John doesn’t believe he’s really doing this but he opens the wallet that he found in the girl’s handbag and takes the money. He leaves everything else intact and replaces the wallet securely inside the handbag, zips it up and puts it on the girl’s lap. She’s still incapable of coordinated move but her eyes follow him closely. 

 _“Ty bastarde_ , _”_ she slurs at John, her voice weak, but he hears it and understands all too well. The self-reproach in his guts doesn’t need a dictionary. He checks one last time that she’s on the way to full recovery and then flees.

 

At Tesco, he realises that he’s got about enough money for a sandwich and a bottle of water. He eats and drinks even though everything tastes foul on his tongue. He wanders through several streets until he comes to a big church looming proudly over an avenue of plane trees. The pattern of red bricks on the church walls reminds him of home and he curls up on a bench in the avenue, tired to the point of exhaustion, and sleeps.

 

*

 

 _“Hej!”_  

An unfamiliar voice rouses John from his brooding on the bench. He looks up and to his utter embarrassment he sees the girl from yesterday – only this time very much alive and energetic, running across the street and dodging the traffic, ignoring the angry honks that follow in her wake, her bright blue eyes fixed on John. 

He scrambles to his feet but she’s on him before he gets the chance to escape. She jabs her finger into his chest, forcing him to take a few steps backwards into the shade of the church wall, her face alight with indignation, and then she draws in a deep breath and– 

“Please, be quiet,” John blurts out even when he knows that the probability of her understanding him is approaching zero. “I am sorry, I really am, but I’m in trouble and I didn’t have–” 

Her eyes widen and John can see her swallowing the words that were trembling on her lips, her train of thought throwing the switch but arriving at the same destination nonetheless: 

“You bastard!” She leans back and her balled fist connects squarely with John’s jaw. 

John is so taken by surprise that the pain takes a moment to register – at about the same time as the loud _thunk_ the back of his head makes as it hits the red bricked church wall. 

Well, what a way to deal with a guilty remorse.

 

The punch doesn’t render him unconscious – not really. But when he next comes around, he’s crouched on the pavement by the wall and the fierce girl is sitting next to him, rubbing the knuckles of her hand vigorously. She shoots him a dark glare. 

“Damn you, this never hurts in the movies.” 

 _Turnabout’s a fair play,_ John thinks and feels the back of his head carefully. An amazing bump, but thankfully no blood. The girl continues her reproofs: 

“If you needed money, you could have just _asked_. I would’ve _given_ it to you.” 

John winces. “I _am_ sorry. But I’m in really big trouble and I didn’t expect anyone to... be willing to help.” 

The girl opens her mouth to say something but then another voice interrupts her, calling out from the other side of the road. 

 _“Dano!”_ Another girl, young and slender with a halo of copper curls framing her freckled face, runs up to them, stopping breathless in front of her friend and throwing both her hands in the air in a universal gesture of exasperation. 

“This is Veronika,” the dark-haired girl points at her friend before she can form any words, “I’m Dana, and this is–” she says to Veronika, indicating John, “–the reason I had to fare dodge last night when I wanted to go home.” 

Veronika rolls her eyes and then offers her hand to John. “Thank you for saving the life of my _stupid_ friend,” she says pointedly. “I guess she hadn’t got around to thanking you yet.” 

It’s Dana’s turn to roll her eyes. She gets to her feet and dusts off the back of her jeans. “Why should I, when I’ve got you to do it? And it wasn’t so bad. I simply forgot about dinner–” 

“As I said, stupid,” Veronica interrupts her mercilessly. 

“Your friend’s right,” John supplies. “You should never forget your regular meals.” 

“Says the man whose stomach was so loud that it charmed the money out of my wallet,” she snorts but then she extends her hand as well. Her grip is firm and when she smiles, she’s actually rather pretty. 

“Well, I couldn’t know you were in the habit of giving money to random homeless men,” John jokes as he also gets to his feet. 

Dana gives him a level look, eyes narrowed. “Anyone can see you’re not homeless. It’s true that you’ve had the same shirt on for several days in a row but your hair still smells of a good shampoo, not the antiseptic stuff they give out in homeless shelters. Your shoes–” 

“Wait!” It’s still too soon after waking up. First getting punched and now he’s being _deduced_ in the middle of a foreign city – John doesn’t know where to start, and in the end he settles for: “You’ve been s _melling_ me?” 

“I was gathering evidence!” 

“Dana studies criminology,” Veronika says mildly, a patient smile on her face. 

“And I used to read your blog,” Dana finishes triumphantly. “Because you _are_ Doctor Watson, aren’t you? I recognised you the moment you started speaking English to me.” 

John digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. This isn’t happening. This simply isn’t happening. 

“You’re one of Sherlock’s fans,” he groans. 

“I really should have punched you harder,” Dana remarks. Veronika gives her another pointed look. 

“Wait,” John repeats, “you’ve been looking for me? Since yesterday?” 

“No,” she answers simply. “This is pure chance and your good luck, I guess. I happened to be here to pick up Veronika for lunch. She studies composition,” and Dana looks at her friend with pride in her eyes while she gestures to the stately building across the crossroads, a building with large statues of Muses around the front entrance. Scraps of violin etudes and someone running their voice over the scales echo through the open windows. 

“It’s academic break, the best time to practice. And you’re lucky because now that I have paid off the theft of my money to you, I can offer you a shower and a good meal for saving my life.” 

John smiles and remembers what Sherlock once said about him. He’s not any closer to solving this case, but there’s definitely something to saving a life. This time, a free shower.

 

*

 

The students take John to their flat. They go on foot down the hill through narrow winding streets paved with cobblestones and covered with broken glass from beer bottles, then past a large construction site probably abandoned years ago, the facades on every street defaced by graffiti. It’s the dirty underbelly of the city, far from the busy streets coursed by tram lines, but Dana assures him it’s the quickest way. 

Cautious hope begins to bloom at the back of John’s troubled mind. If Sherlock is somewhere in this city, someone who knows it through and through could be of immeasurable help. 

After some twenty minutes they turn into a street of apartment buildings, each four or five storeys tall, with facades adorned with intricate stuccoworks that would look beautiful if they weren’t covered in pigeon droppings. Heavy double doors close behind them with a bang and John breathes in the chilly air of a dim stairway.

 

The flat speaks of older, better times. High ceilings, double glass windows, about five rooms from what John can tell by counting the carved doors opening onto the hallway. There is an impressive array of shoes on the long shoe rack and this finally answers the question of how two young girls can afford a flat like that. The place is cohabitated by at least six students, judging by the number of compartments in a post in-tray on the little table next to the door. 

“This was once an upper-class apartment from the First Czechoslovak Republic era,” Veronika explains as she leads the way to the kitchen. “Complete with a butler’s pantry and a maid’s room. It’s been reconstructed a bit and the landlord is really very nice. He allowed me to have a pianoforte in our room. We have to flat-share though. Try to be quiet, Jorka will probably still be asleep. She works as a cashier on holidays and she had a night shift yesterday.” 

The fitted kitchen matches the rest of the flat in size and its state could put the epic messes Sherlock used to make of 221b’s kitchen to shame. Veronika seems unfazed about it, going straight for the fridge and setting about making lunch. Dana reappears in the hallway behind them. 

“I’ve put some clean clothes on the stool next to the bathtub.” 

John blinks twice. It’s true that Dana seems to be rather fond of boyish outfits but her size would probably have last fit him when he was fourteen. She notices his doubts and tosses the towel she brought with her at him with that impatient expression that seems default on her face.

“My little brother’s. He outgrew me years ago. Started Uni last year but is incapable of doing his own laundry.” There is more than a sibling teasing undertone to her voice; she seems almost angry. 

“What if he minds?” John asks. Something in Dana’s voice is telling him to tread carefully. 

“Then I don’t,” she snaps back and disappears again. 

John doesn’t know what to make of it but he knows better than to question his luck. The shower feels like heaven and the pair of linen trousers is not such a bad fit as he feared. The t-shirt is rather tight around his biceps but it’s nothing John can’t cope with. With his mood much improved, and suddenly feeling even hungrier than the evening before, he leaves the bathroom. Not sure where he should go, he stops awkwardly at the entrance to the kitchen, leaning against the doorframe. 

Veronika is standing at the kitchen worktop, lost in thoughts, the knife she’s been using to chop the onions paused mid-air. When she hears John, she sighs and puts it down, wiping her hands. 

“It’s a sore subject,” she whispers, resuming the conversation. “Dana’s parents told her that if she’s going to live with _me_ instead of offering housing to her own little brother, then she should at least take care of him.” 

“And he goes along with it, I suppose.” 

“Boys will be boys,” Veronika says noncommittally. “And I rather like him. He’s a bit of a brat but so is Dana, at times.” 

“Heard you!” Dana’s voice echoes from the farther end of the hallway but now it lacks the sting it bore before. 

 _“Dano!”_ Veronika hisses, gesturing to one of the bedroom doors. _“Jorka spí!”_ She rests her forehead in her palm briefly as if she doesn’t know why she hasn’t given up on Dana long ago. 

True enough, something stirs behind the indicated door and then it opens, a long curious face topped with a sleep-mussed mop of brown hair peeking out of it. Then she spots John and startles, pulling back. 

“Hello,” John says automatically. “Sorry for waking you,” he adds to the empty hallway just for good measure. 

After a moment she reappears, wearing a large fluffy dressing gown and a flirty smile. Her feet are bare and the knot she’s made on the gown’s belt seems rather loose. 

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she purrs. Then she turns to Dana. “What a surprise, you two. After all your talk about rules of _not bringing men_ to the flat, it’s the pair of you who brings one here?” 

Then she leans closer to John and drops her voice into a confidential register. “If it happens you’re not into threesomes after all, you can always knock on _my_ door.”  

John lifts his left hand with the wedding band in lieu of an answer and then retreats into the kitchen. The reaction from the hallway is a cheeky “It was worth a try!” and then Dana comes in, her face red with the effort not to laugh. 

“Well, Doctor Watson,” she says while she attempts to clear enough of the kitchen table surface to make it suitable for eating, “I believe you’ve been telling me about your troubles.”

 

“First of all, let’s be clear on one thing: I’m not going to drag you into my troubles.” 

Dana’s eager face falls immediately but before she can even open her mouth, Veronika interjects in her quiet but firm voice. 

“That’s exactly what I was about to say.” 

She returns the incredulous look Dana gives her with an expression that bears no arguments. 

“No. You wanna repay Doctor Watson for his help? I’m all in. But you’re not getting tangled up in his crime-solving or whatever he is here for. I fear for you enough already as it is–” 

“Fine,” Dana says abruptly. Something akin to panic fills her eyes for a second and she takes a step away from the table as if putting some physical barrier between herself and the lure of excitement. However, when she turns to John a moment later her tone is pleasant, if a bit forcefully so. 

“There must be something we could help you with.” 

“Yes, there is,” John agrees. “Do you have an Internet connection?”

 

*

 

Several minutes later Dana leans back from the laptop screen and mutters reproachfully, “Well, I’d never have said it was this one, and I thought I knew this city inside out.” 

“It’s a rather clever idea, the rendezvous on top of the highest peak,” Veronika admits, “but I bet it works better in any other city than ours.” 

As it is, the wooded top of Kopeček, ‘Little Top’ (“There goes the sense this city has ever made to me,” as Dana puts it) is actually a very good rendezvous point. Not crowded by tourists or locals, far away from any CCTV security camera, the inconspicuously named hilltop lies not far to the north of the racing circuit and its base is easily accessible by car. 

Speaking of cars...

 

“I’ll drive you there.” Dana settles the matter. “I’m not letting some left-driving Englishman make a street disaster out of my car.” 

“Your car already _is_ a street disaster,” Veronika points out but doesn’t argue with her this time. Dana, in turn, agrees to fulfil whatever measures of caution John proposes. 

The time limit Mary gave John when they parted in Vienna will run out tomorrow morning and, until then, John has nothing to do. After lunch, Dana urges him to tell them more of his story, and in the end John relates a heavily censored version of the events that had led him this far.

 

*

 

They set out at dawn. The city is already alive, most of the early shift workers starting at six. After they leave the inner city district with its busy traffic and ever-ringing trams, the roads they take become mostly empty. 

“Is there a place to park the car near the road where nobody would notice anything out of the ordinary?” John asks. 

Dana nods. “In the woods, it’s not a problem. Lots of people go mushroom picking early in the morning. It’s just the season.” 

“Good.” 

“In fact, I might take a look around for some mushrooms myself. Make something of my time while you do the interesting stuff.” 

John smiles at her pouty look. “Remember what you promised to your friend.” 

Dana spares him a brief sideways glance. “She’s more than a friend, you know.” 

John knows. He didn’t need the flirty flat-mate from yesterday to spell out for him what is so obvious. 

“And in the end, I’ll always listen to her.” Dana continues. “She’s my conscience. My compass. And my anchor. And I shouldn’t wax poetical when I’m driving.” She adjusts the angle of the rear-view mirror and shrugs at her own sentimentality but John is sure she meant the things she said. 

“And you? What are you to her?” He’s not sure why he’s asking. 

“I don’t know.” She sounds uneasy. Her next words come out very quietly. 

“It scares me sometimes that I don’t know what she sees in me. I’m afraid that one day I’ll cock it up and she’ll decide she’s had enough of me...” 

“I think she’s very fond of you,” John interrupts her. 

Dana smiles, more with her eyes than with her mouth. “You know what? She is. And I don’t know why.” She glances at her watch and slows down a bit. They are ahead of time and the road is getting windy.  

“People say I’m clever. When I mention criminology. ‘Oh, that must be difficult for a girl,’ they say. Veronika takes no interest in criminology and she says I’m stupid on a daily basis. Stupid for forgetting to eat, stupid for waking my flat-mates... but she never once said that criminology was only for boys. She believes in me.” 

“I told Sherlock he was an idiot the first day I met him,” John says abruptly, out of nowhere. 

Dana concentrates on the road for a while. Then she gives him another one of her quick, bird-like looks, just a peck of a glance and her eyes are back on the road when she speaks. 

“I’ve read your blog. The entry after his suicide... you wrote that you would always believe in him.”

 

They drive in silence for a while. At last John clears his throat but his voice is still rather raw when he tells her, “If you want to know how _not_ to cock it up... here’s some advice. Don’t you ever leave her.” 

Her answer is immediate. “I wouldn’t.” 

“I don’t just mean split up. It’s what she said: don’t get into unnecessary danger. No puzzle is worth your life. No cleverness is worth your relationship.” John makes himself stop. This conversation is digging too near the things he carries so deep inside that he sometimes forgets they’re still a part of him. 

Dana’s words take a long time to come, but at last she says, “I know she’s right. To put it poetically, ours is a lesser world. Brno doesn’t compare to London. Our criminals are no Moriarty. When I graduate, I’ll be a detective with the police. The kind that arrives on the crime scene when the shooting is already over.” 

“Still interesting enough,” John smiles at her.

 

An unpaved road, nothing more than a beaten track for the forest machinery, opens on the right side. Dana pulls up to it and parks the car on the side of the road. Cigarette stubs on the ground and an empty lemonade bottle near a bush show that this spot is probably favoured by the mushroom pickers. 

“Give me an hour,” John tells her. “If I’m not back again by then, don’t wait – go home. If you hear anything like shooting, get into the car and get out of here immediately. Understood?” 

“Understood, _sir_ ,” she smirks but her eyes are serious. John sets out. 


	8. Another Kind of Network

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to sovereign-angel (of Tumblr) for providing the Hungarian bits and again, to Chocolamousse, for what I promise is the last French in this fic:) 
> 
> The German, Italian, and Russian bits I wrote according to my own knowledge. If you find any problem within them, don't hesitate to let me know.

The wood cover of the hill slope is rather sparse, the oaks and hornbeams still young and the wood showing signs of cultivation. No dense growth of young trees, no fallen tree trunks, no windthrow – nothing that would provide good cover. Trodden paths wind up to the wooded top that doesn’t offer many good views of the landscape but at last John finds a vantage point there; through the trees, sparse as they grow, he can watch most of the road rounding the base of the hill in a broad curve. He can even see the spot where he left the car, and he can distinguish Dana’s petite silhouette wandering in spiralling circles not far away from the car, head bent, every now and then stopping to pick something from the ground. 

A car arrives from the other direction that he and Dana took to get here. John studied the maps so he would know the terrain if anything went wrong and so he knows that the car must have turned off the highway that runs farther to the west. The car slows down gradually and at last it comes to a halt by an opening of another beaten path, not far from where Dana is waiting but out of sight around the bend of the road. 

Two people get out. One is short and dark-haired but her bearing and the way she is favouring one side slightly makes John’s heart leap in relief: it’s Mary. She has dyed her hair and changed her clothes but she seems all right. 

The person who got out from the driver’s seat is a man of impressive bulk, wearing camo outfit and boots. The colours of the camouflage pattern are all wrong for being actually military-issued and the head above the lantern-jawed face is shining bald. John watches them as they exchange a few words. He can’t see the expression on Mary’s face from this angle but something in her movements, in the way she keeps a few steps away from the man, speaks of wariness. 

They are too far away for John to see if the man smiles or not. He sees him stepping closer to Mary, raising his hand to grip her by the arm, friendly, over-friendly, his head cocked to the side in a clear ‘ _C’mon_ ’, his broad shoulders closing on her, not inviting but threatening. Before he can think twice about it, John is on his feet and running down the hill. 

He shouldn’t have worried. Quick as a snake, Mary stands upright again two steps away, and this time she’s pointing a gun at the hulk’s chest. 

Beefy guy knows better than to push his luck and clears the scene so quickly that dry leaves and bits of bark fly from under the car tyres as he drives away. A couple of moments later, John pushes through the low bushes on the wood’s edge. Mary whips around, gun steady in her hand. For a second, John stares into the face of his wife, seeing an expression unlike anything he has ever seen before. 

Then a smile breaks through the mask and suddenly it’s Mary again, raven-haired and a bit baggy-eyed but alive and whole and his. She tucks the gun away and lifts the bag she had been carrying before, wincing slightly as she bends and strains the wounded side. John takes the bag from her and pulls her close, hugging her so tightly that he lifts her off her feet and she lets out a surprised “Oof!” 

“Another old friend who owed you a favour?” John nods in the direction where the car took off. 

“I guess the friend bit is no longer the case,” she grins. “He got his hopes up when I appeared at his place last night. Agreed to drive me here, all the way from Vienna. Shame the money wasn’t enough for him.” 

“Yeah, I could see he was expecting a tip,” John grumbles. Mary elbows him in the ribs and laughs. 

“He won’t be sending anyone after you – dunno, out of spite?” John wants to be sure. Mary shakes her head. 

“Certainly not the police. There’s too much dirt on him to even think of it. As for the others...” She shrugs. “He’s a little fish, a would-be tough guy but he doesn’t really know any of my enemies. I think we’re safe for a while. How about you?” 

“Nothing much to write home about.” John leads the way to Dana’s parking spot and he’s glad when he finds her behind the steering wheel with the engine already running. 

“Hi,” Dana says, catching Mary’s gaze in the rear-view mirror as the Watsons make themselves comfortable on the back seats and she manoeuvres the car back onto the road. Otherwise, she doesn’t talk as they drive back and lets John introduce them, sparing a half-ear to the story he tells Mary about how they met, snorting loudly only when John doesn’t forget to mention the ‘Sherlock’s fan’ bit. 

 

“You shouldn’t have put yourself out for us,” Mary smiles at her afterwards, when they’re sitting at the kitchen table in the old flat again, surrounded by the rest of the flat-mates. The reply she earns is curt. 

“Bollocks!” Dana says. “For one thing, your husband saved my life. And for another, I’m not letting the possibility of doing something for Sherlock Holmes slip out of my hands.” 

“There’s nothing more you can do now, Dana.” The way John says it, it sounds like an apology. But Dana is clearly having none of it.   

“Finding a man in a city neither of you have ever been to? That will require a lot of eyes.” 

“That’s something Sherlock would use his Homeless Network for.” John remembers a couple of cases when various strange and scruffy people showed up irregularly at 221b’s doorstep, driving Mrs. Hudson crazy. 

“About networks – not all of them need to be that dirty,” Dana smirks and fires up her laptop.

 

*

 

“Summer. Academic break. Students on holiday jobs. Waiters...” Dana explains as she enters a few words into the Search field. “Booking clerks. Postmen. Messengers. Ice-cream vendors. Bloody leaflet distributors. Whatever you can imagine.” 

“So you’re counting on your... Uni mates?” 

Dana shakes her head. “Not mine. The wrong kind.” She turns to Jorka and gives her a toothy smile. 

“I think that the girls from the medical college are just the thing. Will you load your Facebook friends page, please?” 

Jorka leans away from the table, pursing her lips. “So _now_ you need my friends – the very friends you’ve said you despise? The ones you call the _Men-hunting League?_ ” 

“That’s exactly it!” Dana turns the laptop around so Jorka can see the screen. A full length picture of Sherlock Holmes is loaded on it – that John recognises from the Reichenbach era. Sherlock’s full lips are crooked in an uncomfortable smile and his eyes are shadowed by the infamous hat. 

“Your friends _notice_ men,” Dana stresses her point. “Even _I_ would spare a second look at a mouth like his, and if he was around for a while I’m sure some waitress or a receptionist or a hostess – especially from the Men-hunting League – would remember seeing him.” 

“You should think about a reason why you’re looking for him,” one of the flat-mates, a law-student by name of Adéla, points out. “You can’t very well circulate a photo asking people _Have you seen this internationally renowned detective working here undercover on a top secret mission_? You need a suitable back story.” 

“Perhaps – met this guy, lost his phone number, can anyone help?” John volunteers. 

Jorka tsks at him, rolling her eyes. “I’m sorry to break it to you like this, John, but you’re rubbish at female psychology. I love all my friends dearly but if any of them _missed_ her opportunity with such a man I wouldn’t be the least bit sorry.” 

John looks at Mary, his face a question, and she raises her eyebrows in a _Sorry to disappoint_ _you but it’s true_ answer. 

“Call him a maintenance dodger,” Veronika suggests in her quiet, matter-of-fact manner. “All girls will unite on the holy warpath of hunting him down.” 

Dana looks at her friend in such a way that John’s breath catches a bit. It’s the lips-parted, nostrils-flared, eyes-shining expression that used to appear on Sherlock’s face when John did something light-conducting. Veronika turns away, hiding her smile, and winks at John. 

Dana scrolls furiously down the Search results on her laptop. “Is there any picture of him online without the hat?” 

“Not a chance,” Mary laughs. 

“Can’t find any photo more recent than May last year,” Dana mutters unhappily. Mary bites her lip and John studies the pattern of knots on the wooden table top. The only case Sherlock took after the Watsons’ wedding was the Magnussen one, and there wasn’t any publicity around it at the beginning. Then he got shot, spent months convalescing, and after that came Christmas. 

“The hat must go away,” Dana decides. “Gábi,” she says to another girl of their circle, a graphic design student, “your Photoshop skills are needed.”

 

*

 

For the next two hours Dana’s phone pings every few minutes with incoming text alerts. Jorka’s Facebook message window is equally active but all the messages read the same: _Sorry, haven’t met him. Pretty man, shame, haven’t seen him. Why are the crooks always so good-looking, sorry, haven’t...._  

The rattle of a key in the front door lock is heard from the hallway. A boy’s cheerful voice, surprising in a flat lived in only by girls, precedes the visitor with a loud: _“Zdarec, ségra!”_ Dana looks up. 

“That would be–” 

A boy just shy of twenty years old pokes his head into the kitchen. The quick blue eyes under a dark fringe resemble Dana so much that John already knows how she will finish that sentence– 

“–my brother Martin. Marty, this is–” 

The boy takes in the scene with an incredulous look and then he frowns. 

 _“Proč mluvíte anglicky? A co tu dělá tenhle–“_ he jerks his chin towards John, _“_ – _v mým oblíbeným tričku?”_

“Never mind your t-shirt,” Dana sighs exasperatedly. “And it’s rude speaking Czech when our guests are English–” 

 _“Na, das ist aber Quatsch.”_ The boy sets his feet wider and folds his arms against his chest. _“_ _Pourquoi les Anglais croient-ils que tout le monde parle aussi anglais?_ _Credono davvero che_ _la lingua inglese_ _è–_ _”_

 _“Befejeznéd?”_ Mary says in a pleasant, high-set, melodic voice, a mischievous smile playing around her lips. The look of surprise on the boy’s face is priceless.

 _“Ööö, persze…”_ he stammers at last, red to the tips of his ears, and runs out of the kitchen before anyone can start laughing. 

“Whatever you just said, I need it written down,” Dana manages to get out between giggles. “I’ve never heard my brother shut up like that.” 

“Basically that’s what I told him to do.” Mary shrugs. “Actually I’m impressed. Didn’t expect him to understand Hungarian.” 

“He has a summer job as a tourist guide downtown. He made it a point to learn every language he could so he would feel superior, let me quote, in the face of the English arrogance–” 

 _“Durak!”_ echoes through the hallway. The shock was obviously short-lived. 

“What was that?” John recalls his failed attempts at communication during his first day in Brno and thinks the boy might have a point. 

“Russian for dumbass,” Mary answers promptly. 

Martin parks himself in the kitchen doorframe again, chin held high as if nothing happened but betraying his attitude every now and then by stealing glances at Mary, annoyance and reverence battling in his wide eyes. Then he notices the laptop screen where the Photoshopped picture of Sherlock still glows and his eyes narrow. 

“Who’s that?” he asks, apparently forgetting that he hates speaking English. 

“A friend of mine,” John answers. “Disappeared about a month ago and this city is where he was last seen.” 

“Englishman?” Martin asks. “I thought he couldn’t be.” 

Everyone turns to look at him at once. 

“You’ve seen him?” Dana asks, a little high-pitched. 

“Sure I have,” Martin nods. “I pick up tourist groups at the coach station and he used to loiter around in the mornings. Always pestering those Vietnamese stallholders. Actually I noticed him because at first he was all this honed English, like a Shakespearean on a stage, and the poor buggers only managed broken English back, and then a couple of days later he was back and all fluent Vietnamese. I thought he was only imitating the sounds, taking the piss, but–” 

“When was the last you saw him?” John interrupts. Martin startles at the intensity of his voice and Mary puts a placating hand on John’s arm. 

“About a month ago, sir,” he says cautiously. “Are you with the police? Interpol? Did I just help catch an internationally wanted criminal?” His voice shrills with excitement. 

“Marty, you’re a _treasure_ ,” Dana gets up and hugs him and for the second time in ten minutes, the boy’s ears turn bright crimson.

 

*

 

“They won’t tell you anything.” 

It’s a lazy afternoon in a city smothered with heat. A summer heat wave, typical for July in this part of Europe, is melting the tarmac on the roads. People keep themselves on the shadowed sides of streets but the relief is short-lived; it hasn’t rained for several days in a row and the air is full of dust, sticking to the skin and tickling the throat. The air under the tarpaulin roofs of the stalls around the baking hot concrete monstrosity of the coach station is suffocating. John is sweating just from looking at the men and women in the backs of the stalls, watching them sit resignedly on their stools and chain-smoke packets and packets of cigarettes. 

“They’re like oysters,” Dana continues. “Closed community, especially the elder generation. They send their kids to school and the kids can speak perfect Czech; the elders usually understand pretty well but at the first sign of trouble, they play deaf and mute.” 

John, Mary and Dana, who refused to stay home, and Veronika, who refused to let Dana go anywhere without her, are hanging around the station service building, enjoying the dubious benefit of the enormous concrete roof over the open platform space – there is shade, yes, but the exhaust gases from the passing coaches take a long time to dissipate. 

“What could Sherlock want from them?” John ponders aloud. “From what you’ve told us, they seem harmless to me. Yes, they’re selling fakes and imitations–” he indicates the heaps and rows of clothing of the at-first-sight familiar brand _Adidos_ , “–but I’d think that they would keep away from any real trouble.” 

“It used to be like that,” Dana nods. “But some of them have lived here for over twenty years now, or were born here. They aren’t afraid of deportation, and they’ve grown bolder. In the past three years, the police have had to intervene in over two hundred cases of Vietnamese organised crime. There are gangs now, and they’ve begun to compete with each other. Still inside their own community but it’s no fun when the police raid a house and find a small arsenal of Scorpion submachine guns. 

“And they’re in on– what? Smuggling?” 

Dana fishes out her phone and waits for the coach station wi-fi to load. She searches through the archive of crime news for details illustrating her talk. 

“It’s drugs,” she explains. “Mainly weed farms. Marijuana is still illegal in Czech Republic and all around; they probably export the bulk of what they grow. But not only weed – hard drugs as well. _Pervitin_ – you call that meth, I believe. It used to be a Czech speciality but nowadays, former Czech producers have been degraded to mere dealers.” 

“That’s quite a step up from wheeling and dealing fake brands,” Mary remarks. “This requires organisation. Either by themselves, the new generation who knows the ropes, or...” 

“...or by a third party,” John finishes for her. “Sherlock suspected that someone’s been forcing a merger on local gangs throughout Eastern Europe. He’s been following the trail of some person whose codename is only F. – and it led him here.” 

“This weed business must be profitable if it attracted the attention of some...” Veronika hesitates and then finishes with an awkward smile, “... _Blofeld._ ” 

“The police seized weed worth twelve million on a single raid back in October 2013,” Dana reads from her phone screen. “That would pique the interest of any _Blofeld_ I can imagine.” 

“It’s not what I meant.” Veronika watches the stallholders resigned to the oppressing heat, their world limited by the edges of the stalls; indifferent, invisible. “If it is profitable... someone will be keen on ensuring it remains that way.” 

“And short work will be made of anyone who is noticed snooping around.” Dana understands. She squeezes her friend’s hand and leans closer. “I promised.” Louder, she continues, “Assuming that Sherlock disappeared following whatever leads he managed to get out of them–” 

“He might already be dead,” Mary interrupts grimly. 

That image hits closer to home than John would have predicted. “That’s not necessarily true,” he says heatedly. “I mean, Sherlock isn’t an ordinary sleuth. If they caught him, they’d want to use him, his brains, his skills, whatever. You don’t just put down Sherlock Holmes like you’d put down an old dog that can’t learn new tricks.” 

John calms down and only then notices Mary staring at him, her expression unreadable. She snaps back to reality a second later, shaking her head minutely and running her hands over her eyes as if trying to wipe out a sudden memory. 

“What?” John asks. 

“Nothing.”  

And just like that, John is seething. But instead of reacting, he does what he has perfected during years of being told _‘Nothing’_ : he smiles, the corners of his mouth not quite lifting, and with a tilt of his head he dismisses the fury for the present and carefully saves it for later. 

 

It helps that right at that moment, a little Vietnamese girl running past them stumbles on the uneven pavement and hits the dirt in an uncoordinated fall. When she rolls over and sits up, tears are rolling down her round cheeks and she’s clasping her knee in both hands. 

“Oh, come on.” The doctor in John moves faster than the soldier has time to think. He crouches beside the girl and inspects her bleeding knee. “It’s just a scrape. Let me get it clean, hm?” He reaches for a handkerchief. The girl asks something in Czech. 

“What’s she saying?” John asks Veronika who has also knelt beside the girl. 

The little picture of misery repeats her question in a tearful and hushed tone. 

“She’s asking if you’re a friend of the detective with the long white face and curly hair,” Veronika whispers and nods, keeping her face carefully in check. Aloud she sing-songs a few Czech words that sound sympathetic – and they might well be, because the girl’s eyes well up with fresh tears and she theatrically sniffs aloud while she continues murmuring her message. 

“She says that the detective told her to look out for a man whose face he drew for her.” 

The girl opens her fist and reveals a crumpled paper napkin. John stashes it away before anyone can spot the exchange and forces his doctor-like, kind, concerned smile back onto his face, dabbing the bloodied knee with his handkerchief.  

“She says that he told her to tell you to meet her grandma. She’ll talk to you.” 

“In English?” John makes sure. The girl winks at him through her tears. Then she gets up, bows twice and trots away to the stall nearest to the station entrance, skipping every other step to take the strain off her injured leg. 

Dana, who stood near enough to overhear, looks after the little spy connection with awe in her eyes. “She actually scraped her knee. Drew blood, too.” 

“Sherlock seems to inspire this kind of behaviour,” John says drily. “When he needed people to believe he had a drug addiction, he actually shot up.” 

Mary lets out an odd sound and again she won’t meet John’s eyes when he looks at her. The stash of ignored vexation in the back of John’s mind is growing and he bites his tongue in an effort not to snap then and there. It must be the heat, he decides. The coach station is a bloody furnace. 

The stall the girl disappeared into is a kiosk. The pungent smell of burnt oil and Asian spices is probably designed to keep any potential customer at bay because the old woman sitting there has been stirring the same pot of noodles for the last half an hour. They watch her as much as the little serving hatch will allow them – leaning down to listen to her visitor, getting up, fussing around the kiosk. At last she comes out and heads towards them, carrying two styrofoam containers of steaming noodles. 

When the old woman reaches them, she bows several times like her granddaughter before and hands over the food, saying some Czech phrases in a deferential tone. Then she casts a quick glance at the occupants of other stalls and switches into English, surprisingly well pronounced even if a bit broken. 

“Nom, my granddaughter, says you are here for the detective. He is a good man. Finds out who steals from my kiosk when I sleep. He asks questions. My people fear to tell him. They fear the bosses. Don’t go ask them – they will not talk.” 

She bows again and gestures for them to taste the spicy noodles. John and Veronika follow her suggestion. 

“I talk to him. He knows about my nephew. Poor Gian. He works for the bosses. One day, they take him away. I see him not for three months. Then he is arrested and tried. Eight years in prison. The bosses come and give us money but I care not for the money. I may die sooner than I see him again. This is not right.” 

“Nguyen Van Gian?” Dana asks in a subdued voice, her phone in hand. The eyes of the old woman scrunch in pain and she fights back tears. 

“He was growing the weed on one of the farms, one of those that got found out and raided last year,” Dana explains, reading quickly through the crime news archive. “When the police came in, they found this guy looking after the plants – he had to live there as well. His employers gave him enough food for weeks, sanitary facilities, and then they literally walled him up in there. He was supposed to do gardening there until the harvest time.” 

“My God,” Mary exhales, “that’s slavery!” 

“Then he refused to disclose his actual employers when it came to the trial. God knows if he was threatened, or his family, or he was just that well paid – but he was sentenced for eight years.” 

The voice of the old woman is trembling now. “They take men from families; fathers, brothers. When the police come, the bosses are safe and my neighbours lose a son. Two months ago the bosses take my godson. Good boy he is always to me. He sends me a message where he is. I tell the detective. I want my godson back and my nephew avenged.” 

She draws in a deep breath, calming herself. John and Veronika obediently chew on their noodles, playing the part for potential on-lookers. A grateful Vietnamese woman forcing her thanks for helping her grandchild on politely accepting strangers, that’s how they look from the outside. 

“There is a prison building in the north of this city. The prison is shut, abandoned. They make a drug farm out of it. Safe place, nobody gets out or in. The bosses are there.” 

“Any idea where it is?” John looks at Dana. She nods, a Google map already loaded on her phone screen. The old woman bows one last time, collects the empty food containers and turns away without another word. 

“It’s the old Kuřim prison.” Dana indicates a spot on the map. “It used to be a high security prison with guarded regime. It will be nearly impossible to break into it. However...” she puts away her phone and takes Veronika’s hand, “...John, Mary, our ways part here. It’s your fight only from now on.”


	9. Your Face So Familiar

The railway line to Kuřim forces its way through a hilly terrain, passing through several tunnels and crossing over a winding river multiple times. The air coming through the half-opened window is still hot but softened by the sweet smell of woods, and yet the atmosphere in the compartment is tense and keyed up like a string, ready to snap. 

“You shouldn’t ask her.” Sherlock glares at him from the seat next to Mary, arms folded over his chest and long legs stretched under the seat opposite. He’s only in John’s head and yet he’s blocking the way out of the compartment, forcing John to sit and stare at the landscape unfolding beyond the window with unseeing eyes. 

“Oh I think I damn well should,” John thinks at him, anger at his own subconscious slowly gathering steam. 

“Please, John.” Sherlock huffs. “You’re so well versed in the art of _not talking about things_. Just for once, adhere to it when it actually makes some sense and Leave. It. Alone.” 

“Aren’t you supposed to be on my side?” 

In John’s mind’s eye, Sherlock gives him his patent ‘What is it like in your funny little brains?’ look. “I am.” 

“Damn you, Sherlock, you’re not _my_ conscience,” John thinks and then he fixes his gaze on Mary who’s been doing a fine job of avoiding conversation since they left the coach station. 

“Care to tell me what that was all about?” 

Before Mary has a chance to speak, he adds quickly: “And don’t you ‘ _Nothing’_ me this time.” 

“You won’t like it,” Mary warns him. She looks tired when she says it, words coming out on the automatic side. She seems to already know that John won’t be deterred. 

“If this is some variation on ‘You won’t love me when you’ve finished’, I think we’ve already been over that.” John can feel the muscles along his spine stiffen, the tug of that strange thin-lipped smile on the corners of his mouth. This fight has been a long time coming. 

“Fine,” Mary snaps, taking up on the adrenaline. “Just – it was rich to hear your little speech about how nobody could put Sherlock down like a good-for-nothing dog.” 

“What do you mean?” John closes his eyes briefly to dismiss the image of Sherlock glaring daggers at him, now crouched on the seat in a self-protective ball. _‘Look, the way out is free, leave it and go take some air in the aisle’_ , that’s what Sherlock’s posture says to John’s subconscious, and once again John decides to ignore it. 

“Something that Sherlock told me,” Mary says. “When I came to the hospital to apologise.” 

“When?” John searches through the mess of his memories from the time after Sherlock was shot. When did Mary come to the hospital? Right after Sherlock woke up, yes, and she was alone with him for a while, but Sherlock was in no shape to talk at the time... “You came to the hospital – after his cardiac arrest? During his convalescence?” 

“You wouldn’t have known – you weren’t talking to me by then. I was afraid I’d run into you in his hospital room but it turned out that there was plenty of time.” 

John closes his eyes again, this time against the memories. Him, sitting for long hours in his old chair at Baker Street and staring into nothing. Him, walking in aimless circles through Regent’s Park, stomping on his anger that was threatening to make some harsh, unforgivable decisions for him the moment he set eyes on Sherlock in the hospital bed. Him, John Watson, visiting his best friend in hospital for a brief time before the end of visiting hours and spending most of his days anywhere else. 

“So you came – to apologise? ‘Sorry, Sherlock, that I put a bullet through your liver’?” 

Once provoked, Mary doesn’t back off. “Isn’t that what people do? How else would he have forgiven me?” 

“It doesn’t work like that!” 

The look Mary gives him is mirrored on the face of the imaginary Sherlock with such precision that John wants to laugh at the absurdity of it. “It doesn’t work like that _with you,_ ” she says. “But it worked for us. He _did_ forgive me.” 

“You two–” John can’t contain himself. 

“More alike than you’d like?” Mary’s voice is like a whip. “Well, sorry for understanding your best friend better than you ever did.” And now the whip hits a spot John didn’t even know was sore. 

“But back to your question,” Mary drives on mercilessly. “We talked a lot. Sherlock told me how he pulled through the flatline. He told me there was a moment when he just wanted to let go – when the pain was too much – when he felt that there was nothing to come back to – when he thought he was being put down like an old dog. His very words, John.” 

John is stunned. “Why would he think that?” 

Mary leans back in her seat and gives John a pitying look. “Yes. Why would he?” 

“Look, that’s hardly fair,” John growls. “So I wasn’t around much after the wedding, right? I mean, you were pregnant, for God’s sake. I wanted to be there for you. And _he_ could have texted, called, whatever, asked me on a case. He didn’t have to wait for me to make the first move!” 

“Would you have agreed to go with him?” The way Mary asks, it sounds like a test question. Yes, No, I don’t know. John wants a fourth option. 

“Because there was the possibility that you’d say no,” Mary answers for him. “And that would have hurt even more than not asking at all. It’s why I waited six months for you to start a conversation with me again, John. You have to arrive at your decisions by yourself, otherwise you feel forced and you resent them even when they’re right.” 

The adrenaline has run out, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste of self-reproach. 

“You were right,” John mutters to both of his companions, the real and the imaginary at once. “I didn’t want to know that.” 

“It’s fine, John.” Mary lays her hand over his on the armrest. “You’re coming for him this time.” 

Slowly, John turns his palm up and wraps his fingers around hers. The train begins to slow down, approaching their destination. The ride took only twenty-five minutes. It felt like hours.

 

*

 

They have waited until nightfall and now they’re lying on the tin roof of an abandoned factory building on the other side of the prison access road. The metal surface under their bellies and elbows is still radiating warmth even though the sun set three hours ago. They take turns with night vision field glasses; the things are rather heavy to be held before one’s eyes in such a position for long. Mary used her time in Vienna well, and her bag contains many useful things now. The area of the former prison, enclosed in a triple fence, lies open in front of them and from their position on the roof they have a ringside seat. 

The two identical four-storey high buildings in the middle, as well as the lower buildings on either side, betray no signs of life. All basement and ground-level windows are boarded up from inside. The entire area is illuminated only by the diffuse light reflection of the nearby city on the low clouds, and sometimes by an occasional stray beam of headlights from some car passing on the motorway not far away. It’s never really dark at night where people live, John thinks as he zooms in on one of the barred windows. The lighting level is barely sufficient but he thinks he can make out darker patches of new mortar around the spots where the bars are anchored to the walls. 

“The bars have been reinforced recently,” he whispers. 

“According to the records, this place was shut down twelve months ago,” Mary whispers back. 

“Wouldn’t the power have been disconnected by now?” 

Mary raises herself up on one elbow and looks over her shoulder, her eyes sweeping over the mammoth grounds of various factories, manufacturing plants and engineering workshops that spread out all the way from the train station to the old prison, a good mile in length. Some of the buildings have found new owners and new use in the post-Communist era but most of the grounds are vacant, dark and decaying. 

“Either they’re stealing electricity or they’re simply supplied with power like any other customer – and they pay for it. Everything goes through a computerised system nowadays, nobody really double-checks the end customer address.” 

“The bills must be enormous,” John objects. “Growing weed – you need lamps, heaters. Someone would notice.” 

“The people whose job it is to notice are probably bribed to turn a blind eye,” Mary smirks. 

John inspects the prison grounds. Three belts of fence enclose the area in a generous rectangle, every single metre of the fence in direct line of sight from at least one of the twin buildings. A single wire runs along the top of the middle fence. Live wire or an alarm. Only one exit road with no blind corners. He’s about to hand the binoculars to Mary when something catches his attention. 

A car has turned off the factory area service road and is now pulling up to the prison gate. It’s a dark coloured SUV, driving with the lights off. Now the seemingly abandoned buildings stir into life: there is movement in the old guardhouse, quick flickers of light behind the painted-over windows. Two men come out. They’re armed; from their slightly blurred silhouettes in the night vision John can’t distinguish what kind of gun they carry but they seem like semi-automatics. Then one of them switches on a torch and John has to shut his eyes tight against the sudden brightness in his vision field. Before the light sensitivity software has time to accommodate for the new level, the men have inspected the incoming car to their satisfaction and they’re opening the gate. 

The car drives in and parks just out of view from the drive. From his vantage point on the roof, John can still see it but it’s farther away than he’d like. Two men get out of the car, their dark clothing blending with the night. The residual lighting level is not enough to allow John to discern faces; the image is too grained by distance and obscured by digital noise. All John can tell is that if they’re armed, it is probably with handguns hidden on them. The smaller of the two is carrying a large duffel bag and something that looks very much like a laptop bag; the hands of the other are empty. 

Then the tall one fishes something out of his pocket. John squints into the binoculars: the object is small, rectangular, and mostly white. The movements of the man’s hands as he manipulates it are somehow familiar, and he’s not even looking at it, talking to his companion instead. Then it hits John: it’s a pack of cigarettes. Unwrap, open, pull one out, flip it, put it between the lips: there is really only one way to go about a cigarette. John holds his breath and waits for the lighter. A few seconds of added light source should give him an opportunity to distinguish the man’s face. Maybe it’s one of the ‘bosses’; maybe they can find him in the Wanted persons register. It would be nice to know who they’re up against. 

The single spot of light flares up over the night vision field and again John has to blink and wait for the software to buffer the brightness. It takes only a second and then he zooms in at maximum to get a good look. 

He nearly drops the binoculars off the roof edge. 

“What are you doing?” Mary hisses. John barely hears her. His grip on the binoculars is white-knuckled now as he stares and stares, waiting. The lighter has been switched off, of course, and the cigarette’s faint glow is not enough to illuminate– 

The man pats his pockets and fishes out a phone. Holding it close to his face, he reads something off the screen. The bluish glow turns his face into a mask of shaded dips and lit planes and it’s a face John has seen under this particular lighting a hundred times before. 

It’s Sherlock. 

Wordlessly, John hands the binoculars over to Mary. He hears her breath hitch, the slight gasp, a muttered curse, even though he really doesn’t need confirmation of what his eyes just told him. He noticed other things, too. Sherlock’s hands are free and he’s relaxed, enjoying a smoke, wielding a phone, giving out orders. He’s not a captive. 

He’s the boss.

 


	10. Not a Pressure Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you start on this chapter, please be sure to re-check the tags. They have been updated.

John has rolled over on his back and is now staring at the orange-lit mass of clouds hanging low in the sky. The tin gives off a pleasant warmth, contrasting with the chill of the night air seeping through the fabric of his shirt, and his thoughts are a whirlwind. He simply doesn’t understand. 

“I really should have put that on a t-shirt,” he manages at last, letting his head fall to the side, facing Mary. “It’s something that bastard Magnussen said,” he explains when he’s met with a blank look, “when I said that I didn’t understand his shit.” 

“In that case, I could use one as well,” Mary snorts. 

There are so many questions pushing against each other in their fight for priority that John gives up on trying to voice them aloud. He settles for arranging them into two categories: the _Why’s_ and the _How’s._  

Mary takes another look through the binoculars. “They’ve gone in. The building on the left side. There’s a door facing the exercise yard, and from the way they were fussing around it before they went in it’s probably booby-trapped.” 

“Well, I think the original plan of getting in is a dead loss by now,” John grumbles. 

As usual, Mary is the calmer of them both, concentrating on facts. Her tactical mind is probably re-calculating their options and coming up with new plans even as she listens to John’s musings: 

“Sherlock was still on the hunt and reporting regularly to Mycroft until a month ago. If he pulled off a successful infiltration of the gang and somehow managed to become its leader, how come he didn’t report that as well?” 

Mary clears her throat. After a pause filled by her pointed silence, John’s eyes narrow. 

“No,” he rushes to say. “Sherlock might be a _lot_ like you, Mary, but he wouldn’t have switched sides.” 

“That wasn’t nice,” Mary comments lightly but otherwise she doesn’t stress her previous suggestion any further. She checks the prison grounds again and puts the binoculars back into the bag. 

“Everything’s quiet. They didn’t leave the engine running so they’re planning to stay for some time. I guess it would be a good time to alert the police.” 

John shakes his head. “You already said it – the local police are bound to have been bribed. Anyway, this place is guarded, armed, and they’re probably keeping watch as well; I guess they’d be long gone before any Czech version of a SWAT team could arrive. And you’re still in the CIA’s sights and I happen to have got here on a stolen passport and a forged ID which I’ve lost anyway, so the first thing any police officer would do is arrest us.” 

Mary has begun to crawl backwards during his speech to get farther away from the roof edge. John follows suit and once they’re out of sight of the prison windows, they find the top of the fire escape that they used to get onto the roof. The latticed staircase is so steep that they have to move on it like on a ladder. The damned thing probably last saw maintenance in the previous century and it’s rickety and covered in rust and John has to balance the heavy bag on his shoulder while simultaneously watching out for Mary under him so he won’t step on her fingers and all of that while trying to move absolutely soundlessly– 

When the first attachment bolt comes loose from the wall, the sharp _PING_ seems to John to be the loudest thing he’s ever heard. 

He is wrong. 

The clinking of the remaining bolts is swallowed entirely by the creaking of strained metal as the staircase begins to crumble under their combined weight. 

For a second spent suspended between the balance and the fall, John tries to hold on. He feels, more than sees, Mary taking the jump, away from the direction where the staircase is falling. They are still very high from the ground and she lands hard, her legs folding under her into a roll like a trained paratrooper. John can see her silhouette on the ground, crouched to the side with pain from the still healing wound. 

Then gravity wins. John bends his knees ready for the jump but once the staircase decides to finally succumb to age it goes about it terribly quickly. Before he even has the time to let go of the metal steps, the impact knocks them out of his hands. Something hits him in the back, the hard jab narrowly missing his kidneys, and then another winding blow comes squarely across his ribs. John loses control of his fall, his body caught in the havoc of twisting metal, and the last thing he registers is that he’s going to hit the concrete with his bad shoulder first. A bright pain blossoming at the back of his head then erases everything else.  

 

*

 

Everything is dark. It’s stuffy and damp and annoyingly hot and dark as pitch. When John tries to lift his head, he realises why: he’s got a sack over his head. 

Then a cacophony of pain from various parts of his body arrives at his brain and John bites back a groan. His wretched shoulder hurts so badly that it takes a failed attempt at moving his hands before he realises that they’re bound tightly behind his back. He cannot even feel the bonds; how long has he been out for his hands to get so numb? 

Straightening his spine puts additional strain on his shoulder and battered ribs so he bends forward again. Something hard digging into the back of his thighs: the seat of a wooden chair. Level ground under his feet: a concrete floor. He swallows several times to get rid of the persistent ringing in his ears but even after that he cannot hear much of his surroundings – his head feels like it’s full of cotton wool. Everything – faraway steps, dripping of water, the low buzz of some electrical appliance – comes through muffled. 

His back hurts where it made close acquaintance with the old staircase, his shoulder is probably ripe for therapy again and he can feel dried blood itching the back of his neck but other than that, his bones seem whole and he’s not even concussed. 

Considering that he’s blindfolded, trussed up and probably stashed away inside the prison building, John knows better than to count his chickens before they’re hatched. Something tells him that the number of bruises on his body might not yet be final.

As if in confirmation, a large hand grips him by the neck and yanks his head up. 

 _“On prosnulsja,”_ growls a heavy voice from his right. John doesn’t understand the words but the meaning is clear enough. He’s awake and thus ready for interrogation. 

The sack is snatched from his head and John screws his eyes shut against the sudden onslaught of bright light. The cool air is a welcome relief and he gasps even though every deep breath feels like needles jabbing under his ribs. Very cautiously, he opens his eyes. 

Small, windowless, brightly lit room. Remnants of a bullet-proof plastic partition, the telephone wiring still hanging from it, across the middle of what must have once been a visitation room. No furniture except for a wobbly table and a pair of chairs. One under John’s sore arse and the other... 

On the other chair, legs casually crossed and hands steepled under his chin, sits Sherlock.

 

*

 

John doesn’t know what to do, what to say. A single clear thought flickers through the racket inside his head: if Sherlock is here undercover, playing the part of a drug cartel boss, John mustn’t give him away. There’s that Russian gorilla standing two steps to the right of John, washed-out blue eyes drowning in his round, fatty face with a flat nose that has seen a lot of fist-fights. John hopes that he can avoid meaningful looks, that he can keep the signs of recognition off his face, that he can act as if he never saw Sherlock before. He hopes against hope that the deer-in-the-headlights stare he already gave him will be interpreted as a side effect of having his head knocked on the ground after a several metres high fall. 

Sherlock looks different in a way John finds hard to define. It’s not simply in the clothes – Sherlock hasn’t forfeited his predilection for suits and the black turtleneck under the dark grey jacket instead of an open shirt collar is not that much of a difference. It’s something about his face that is vaguely disconcerting – it could be a part of his role or simply the effect of six months in the field. The black curls are slicked back from his forehead, there’s a permanent wrinkle between his eyebrows where they draw closer when Sherlock observes or thinks, his cheeks are a bit rounder and from what John can see of his wrists, the skin is not so taut over the joints as it used to be. He has kept himself in good health, it seems; John somehow would have imagined a spectre exhausted by six months of a strenuous hunt but the truth is that Sherlock looks fitter than ever. 

Pale blue eyes observe him coldly, betraying nothing. John swallows and swallows again, waiting. Then Sherlock lifts his eyebrows, as if some trial time he’s given John has run out, and on that cue the thug kicks John solidly in the shin. 

 _“Nu gavari!”_  

John hisses, the pain sharp and his bewilderment moving up a few notches. He understands this question – some of the elder Afghanis during his deployment taught him a few words in Russian, a heritage of the former Soviet presence in Afghanistan. They expect him to speak? What should he say? What name should he give? 

Sherlock shakes his head and then says something that sounds like a question – in Czech. It’s a slightly heavier accented Czech from what John can tell after spending only a few days in the country but it’s definitely less sing-song than Russian, emphasis on the first syllables instead of the last ones. Right. Of course anyone caught snooping around the prison facility would first be considered to be Czech. It means that Sherlock wants John to act like this: an unfamiliar stranger caught sticking his nose where he shouldn’t. John can work with that. 

“I’m a journalist,” he blurts out. Sherlock’s lips twitch in a barely-there smirk. 

“Investigative web-journalist,” John drones on, feverishly making up the story in his head. “I’m writing a book on the European soft-drug business and I got an anonymous tip that something fishy has been going on here...” 

“Are you quite sure the tip was anonymous?” 

And God, that voice. Deeper than John remembers, the cigarettes are most likely to be blamed for that. He didn’t even know how much he missed it. Only the tone is slightly off – thoughtful, intent, devoid of something John used to hear there and which he can’t put his finger on right now. 

Then the actual content of the question registers with him and he nods. Not for the first time since he woke up he thinks of Mary: there’s no sign of her and nobody’s mentioning her. She must have escaped the fall unscathed and got safely away before the guards came to find John. Pity the accident hadn’t turned out the other way around – John could have carried her for a while but Mary had no chance with the dead weight of his unconscious body. 

Then Sherlock stands up abruptly and closes the distance between them in two long strides, standing in front of John’s chair and leaning down to a face-to-face level. 

“Are you aware,” he asks lightly as he traces his fingertip along John’s hairline, following the short haircut John is still fond of, “that if you were indeed a lone wolf of a journalist, you’d be quite a problem...” The finger follows the dried trickle of blood on John’s neck and John has to suppress a shudder as his body’s fight-or-flight instincts scream something incomprehensible at him. He has no idea why he’s suddenly drenched in cold sweat. Where is this primal fear reaction coming from when this is only a game and the strange persona in front of him is only something that Sherlock is putting on as a disguise?  

The dreamy voice continues: “Yes, quite a problem... but not a problem that can’t be solved by a single bullet.” 

John swallows against a dry throat. _Right, Sherlock, what a way to tell me that I’m a shite liar._ How is he supposed to play this game? “I told people where I was going,” he says warily. 

Sherlock is still touching him, a fingertip resting on John’s pulse point like the finest sensor of a lie detector, and he shakes his head briefly. “No. You didn’t.” The single point of contact is burning and repulsive, it makes John want to jerk his head away and get out of reach, and maybe he’s letting the game get to his nerves too much because he never had problems with touching Sherlock. Never. 

Then the finger moves again, sliding unerringly towards John’s left shoulder, passing over the bruises and trashed muscles that twitch even under the ghost-light touch and finding the bullet scar, distinct to the touch even through the fabric of John’s shirt. The fingertip circles and probes and Sherlock smiles, one corner of his mouth going up while the other tugs down. It’s the crooked smile, the genuine smile John has witnessed on rare occasions and it’s gone as quickly as it came.  

“But I think,” the dreamy tone is back, “it would be unwise to kill you just now. There are things about you I’d like to hear.” 

Hand still resting on John’s shoulder, Sherlock straightens. The push of his weight on the battered flesh makes John wince. 

“Be a good little soldier and tell us who sent you after me, and how you got on my track.” 

Sherlock’s fingers are no longer just resting on his skin – they’re pressing now, blunt nails like claws even through the shirt. His thumb digs in the middle of John’s scar, right where the tissue is thinnest, most tender, where it still hurts nearly as much as when the bullet itself ripped through the skin and muscle and bone and John cannot flinch, the grip of Sherlock’s hand on his arm like iron, and the pressure grows and pain spikes until he feels tears rushing into his eyes and he gives in, letting out a gasp. 

He understands. It’s a warning. Sherlock has just marked for him the two questions he mustn’t answer no matter how terrible the pain will be. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says as a code which means _Don’t worry, I won’t let you down._  

“Then I’m afraid it can’t be helped,” Sherlock says softly, almost pityingly. He returns to his chair and addresses his Russian companion. “Anton?” 

 _“S udovoljstvjem,”_ Anton grins and walks around to take a wide stance where Sherlock just stood. He cracks the knuckles in his fingers and John grits his teeth.

 

When the first round is over, John is allowed to slump forward again and he crumples like a rag doll, spitting blood on the floor before his bound legs. His left eyebrow is torn and he can feel every drop of blood on his rapidly swelling eye and on the skin across his cheekbones, burning like hell. His head spins a little and he fights against the dizziness even though it means that he’s more aware of the pain. He has to keep his senses and stay lucid for this interrogation. 

He seeks out Sherlock’s eyes, cold, blue like thick ice, blank of emotion. It’s startling to see the painfully familiar shape of lids and eyelashes framing something so devoid of warmth. How can Sherlock watch this and not even blink? Then John remembers the look in those blue eyes as they stared unseeing at the sky, back there on the pavement in front of Bart’s. Those eyes have watched John collapse in the greatest emotional pain of his life and yet they didn’t move. Sherlock is a terrific actor, and if he can pull through this, so can John. And maybe it’s over by now. What more does Sherlock need to convince his colleagues that he harbours no sentiment towards this stranger? 

Sherlock watches him and waits. Then he nods again. 

John blacks out for a second or two during the second round. Anton hasn’t missed the opportunities offered by the smarting bruises John has gathered up to now. Between the blows, John catches sight of Sherlock’s face once or twice. There’s a glazed, unfocused look in his eyes, and his breath comes out shallowly. 

A horrified thought flashes through John’s spinning head. Sherlock must be drugged. Brain-washed, more likely. What if he’s letting his best friend be beaten to a pulp simply because he doesn’t remember John at all? 

“Still not speaking?” Sherlock waits. John feels every throb of blood in his veins, feels it seeping out of the broken capillaries on his face. _It’s me, John,_ he thinks desperately. _Please, Sherlock, let this be over._  

Sherlock nods again. 

John doesn’t know how he’s still conscious after the third round. 

Sherlock stares at him during it, unmoved, still waiting. John knows he can’t hold on much longer. Not physically – the beating is terrible and he’s going to need a long time to recover from this – but the pain is something he can handle. It’s his mind he fears for: dark, guilty, unwelcome thoughts are chasing their tails in his head and he desperately tries _not_ to think them but the suspicion is there, won’t be ignored and grows stronger with every blow– 

He’s beginning to think that Sherlock is not acting. 

He’s beginning to believe that Sherlock is not brain-washed. 

Though he’s terrified by his own thoughts, it occurs to him that Sherlock might – just _might_ – want him to hurt. 

Guilt washes over him. How often was Sherlock beaten and tortured during his two-year mission? How did John initially treat him when he finally got back into what he thought was the safety and comfort of London, greeting him with violence instead of relief and joy? How hard have these last six months have been that Sherlock has spent undercover, moving up the ranks of gangs and cartels, all alone again when John should have been there with him but chose to stay behind? 

Maybe, just maybe, Sherlock thinks John _deserves_ this. 

 _“Nu davaj, davaj, gavari,”_ Anton laughs at him, all teeth, as John lifts his head with difficulty and tries to draw in some breath after a vicious blow to his abdomen. He can’t hold on any longer. Suddenly John wishes his Russian wasn’t limited only to basic courtesies. If he could provoke Anton to lash out with his strength unchecked... 

Then he remembers something and he grins even though the tug at the corners of his mouth flares his face with more pain. He licks the cuts on his lips, the pain almost unbearable but still not enough. 

 _“Durak,”_ he spits out together with a mouthful of fresh blood and when the next blow comes, it finally sends John into the merciful darkness. 


	11. Connecting the Dots

“You could have been the making of my brother...” a half-mournful, half-condescending voice drawls from some indeterminate distance as John slowly regains consciousness. 

His body aches. It is difficult to determine just how much it hurts because somehow John can’t remember how it feels not to be in pain. His shirt is sticking to his skin in places where the beating drew blood. Every move pulls at the scabs and John wonders if this is how crayfish feel when they’re casting their shell and their soft, vulnerable body is exposed to the hard, sharp-edged world. 

He cracks one eye open – the other is not much use, drowning completely under the swelling. He’s lying on his side, hands still bound behind his back, on a linoleum floor in a small rectangular room. There are holes in the floor by the wall where a bed was once bolted securely, and a toilet bowl with a sink in a corner. A single frosted-glass window high under the ceiling lets through weak, filtered daylight. It’s a solitary confinement cell, John realises. They’ve put him in a cell. 

He manages to lift his head and spits out a lump of clotted blood. Bile rises shortly afterwards and John coughs and retches, every single rib dancing a sabre dance under his skin. Then he remembers the voice he thought he heard while waking up and shifts a bit to look at the door. 

Mycroft Holmes, impeccable from the double Windsor knot on his tie to the tip of his umbrella, leans casually against the door, legs crossed, eyebrows raised. 

“...but in the end, you’ve made him worse than ever.” Mycroft shakes his head at him in disappointment. 

“Oh great,” John groans, but only in his mind as his mouth is in no shape for talking. His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth and he’ll be lucky if his jaw is not fractured. 

“So I’m seeing you now? I actually preferred it when my cracked subconscious looked like your brother.” 

Mycroft, unimpressed, turns a bit to examine the small shuttered window in the door. Then an image of Sherlock’s face in the visitation room, coldly witnessing John’s torture, resurfaces from the fog of John’s memories and he is suddenly glad he’s seeing the wrong Holmes now. 

After all, he knows all too well why it’s now Mycroft on his mind. Nobody could be a better embodiment of the suspicions that have haunted John since yesterday. 

“Is that why you’ve handed Mary’s file to the CIA?” John can’t help but ask even though he knows he can’t get a real answer. “It’s because you hate me?” 

“‘Hate’ is such a strong word, Doctor Watson.” 

 _As strong as blood and bruises and cracked ribs and face beaten to a pulp, perhaps?_ John thinks to himself. Mycroft’s perfectly manicured hands are clean. His knuckles have never done anything harder than knock on a door. 

“Maybe for a stuffed shirt like you,” he says instead. “You’re above hate... and beyond love.” 

The umbrella tip hits the floor with a dull _thud_ as Mycroft spins around to face John again. 

“I _loved_ my brother. And look what you’ve made of him.” 

Anger blinds John for a moment and he draws in a sharp breath. Fresh blood trickles down his nose. 

“He’s not–” he nearly shouts aloud, “he’s not like that because of me!” Against his will, the protest gets weaker with every word. John can’t help it, this nagging thought: _What if, what if he is?_  

 

When he opens his eyes again, Mycroft is gone. Dana sits on the linoleum in his place, arms wrapped around her narrow shoulders. 

“She’s my conscience, my compass.” She’s smiling as she repeats the words she said about her partner and then she looks directly at John. “How could you not know what you’ve been to him?” 

John thinks of Dana, that sparkling, audacious, impulsive creature with the brilliant mind of a promising criminologist – clinging to the steadying love of her quiet, sensible friend like a talisman. Has Sherlock really relied on John like that? 

Yes, he has. _It’s always you, John Watson: you keep me right._ And John had missed it. John had completely overlooked the influence he had on Sherlock, thinking of him as an impenetrable, untouchable, incomprehensible phenomenon rather than a man. 

He even said so. _You love it. Being Sherlock Holmes._ And Sherlock didn’t know what that was supposed to mean – maybe because at the time, Sherlock’s own perception of himself had already irrevocably expanded to _Sherlock-Holmes-and-John-Watson_? While John simply didn’t notice himself occupying the most important place in Sherlock’s life, the place of a helmsman on that wildly tossed ship called Sherlock Holmes?

And what kind of compass has John turned out to be? He’s brought Sherlock to his knees – and not even Moriarty succeeded at that. John sees himself standing in helpless shock, watching the commandos arrive at Appledore and the laser sights dancing all over the head of his best friend as he waited, defeated, resigned, to bear the consequences of his actions. As he surrendered to the police, charged with murder he thought he _had_ to commit – for John’s sake.  

What kind of a friend has John been if Sherlock believed he had to sacrifice his work, his freedom, his _life_ – to make him happy? 

John is sick with himself.

 

“Don’t be,” he hears a familiar voice in his head, tinged with gentleness that was there so rarely and that he feared he would never hear again. “It’s not your fault.” 

Sherlock, the imaginary Sherlock in the Belstaff and scarf and even his leather gloves, sits by the wall under the window. The dispersed light reflects on the strands of his hair and makes the black curls look almost streaked with grey. It’s the man John remembers, _his_ Sherlock, and John wishes fiercely that he could force his imagination far enough for Sherlock to touch him, enough to feel the touch, to erase the memories of _that thing_ that Sherlock has turned into running its fingers over John’s skin. 

“You used to say everything’s my fault,” he chuckles. 

“This is some kind of Stockholm syndrome,” Sherlock says meditatively, eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You mustn’t believe you brought this on yourself. Don’t let my brother mess with your head.” 

“I’m messing with my own head,” John points out. But Sherlock might have a point. It sobers him a little. 

“It’s not your fault,” Sherlock repeats firmly. Then he sighs. “As far as the blame goes, I cocked it up first. By jumping off that roof.” 

Oh, but this is John’s favourite train of thought. Only today, viewed through the light of a window in solitary confinement, it’s not the easy, steaming-straight-ahead line it used to be. 

“No, Sherlock,” he admits in a rare moment of honesty. “You don’t get the credit for my life decisions. My marrying an ex-assassin had nothing to do with your absence or presence. She’d still be my pressure point, and yours by proxy, and it would still go all to hell.” 

Sherlock says nothing but his expression seems to disagree. John snorts as he remembers all those women who tried valiantly to become John’s girlfriend only to be insulted, frustrated, or scared off by Sherlock. 

“That wouldn’t have worked with her,” Sherlock follows John’s thoughts and argues before John can even put them into words. “I wouldn’t have succeeded in scaring her off. She’s good for you.” 

Sherlock lays down the statement so matter-of-factly that John is instantly reminded of a doctor prescribing medicine. _Two doses of a murderous wife a day and you’ll be as right as rain._ John has never understood this, this – sympathy Sherlock had for Mary. 

“Of all people, how come _you’re_ the one to be her advocate? She shot you!” 

Sherlock levels an unperturbed gaze at him. “It was the only logical course of action for her.” 

“Jesus!” John has missed these arguments. “Sherlock, you don’t just put bullets into people because it’s _logical_!” 

Sherlock’s answer is very quiet. “You also don’t jump off roofs to protect people you care for.” 

“Okay, I get it.” John huffs. “You two, my favourite pair of psychopaths. I suppose I should have seen it coming, given how well you got on with her from the start.” 

“Of course we got on. She _liked_ me, though I fail to recognise why. I suppose it’s a requirement for a Watson, and since she wanted to be one–” 

John wishes he could toss an imaginary cushion at his friend’s imaginary head. 

“And she was there for you when I couldn’t be,” Sherlock adds, seriously this time. “She saved you from what I’d done to you. Of course I like her.” 

“I bet she won’t like you now,” John grumbles, staring up at the ceiling. He hopes Mary is all right somewhere out there, working out how to save him. She will raise hell if she has to. The thought is comforting. If it was only possible to forget the pain, John could believe that yesterday was nothing but a particularly vivid nightmare. Somehow it seems impossible to draw a connection between this imagination of his years-long friend and the reality he encountered yesterday. 

“Seriously, Sherlock, what was that?” Another question John knows has no chance of being answered but it helps him think. “It wasn’t you – it just wasn’t you. What happened to you?” 

When he turns his face back towards the window wall, Sherlock is gone.

 

*

 

Time flows unevenly; at least that’s how it seems to John. He dozes off once or twice despite his uncomfortable position on the floor and the overall dull ache in his body. When he awakens the next time, he feels marginally better: his strength is coming back by increments and his head isn’t such an obfuscated place any more. He’s also parched with thirst. 

When he gets a good enough grip on himself to sit up without his head reeling, he tries to ascertain his location. The interrogation must have occurred in the wee hours of the morning; assuming that he hadn’t passed out for more than a few hours afterwards it’s now the following day. The small window is too high above the floor for John to get a peek out but at least he can see the blurred circle of the sun high in the sky. He remembers the prison layout and its orientation to the four cardinal points from when he looked at it with Mary. The main axis of the grounds runs from north-west to south-east. All the windows in the two main buildings are facing either the yard or the north-west and south-east, respectively. Earlier, Mary observed that the men were entering the building on the left side, that being the northern one. This means that if he’s now seeing high sun, he must be in one of the cells facing the yard; quite possibly in an upper storey because his window is not in shade cast by the other building, and moreover it means that the time is before noon. 

Well done, Captain Watson, he thinks to himself, then dismisses for the present the nagging thought of _Why hasn’t Sherlock come to check on me yet, and possibly explain himself?_ and moves on to the next item: water. 

The sink next to the toilet is still equipped with taps. Getting to his feet sends another wave of nausea through John’s stomach but this time he pulls himself together quickly. He takes a few wobbly steps to the sink and gives one of the taps a trial nudge with his elbow. Growing weed requires a lot of water, after all, so maybe they left the building’s plumbing supplied... 

The pipe hiccups, coughs, something like sand falls out of the tap and finally water gurgles out, brown with dirt at first but gradually getting clearer. It tastes too much of calcium deposits but right now it’s the best drink John’s ever had. 

Satisfied with having checked off two items on his survival schedule, John crouches down beside the toilet and rests his head on the water pipe. Now it’s time for the nagging thoughts and John is about to give them some serious consideration when he suddenly hears something. 

A faint clanking sound. Very distant banging of metal on metal. John lifts his head, alert, but the sound is gone. Almost convinced that he only imagined it, he leans his head back and there it is again: _bang-bang, bang-bang, bang, bang, bang._  

It’s coming through the pipe. Someone in a similar cell on a different storey, or possibly someone down in the basement where the water main would be located, is knocking on the pipe. They could be anywhere; lead pipes can carry sounds for impressive distances. It could be a mechanical sound, the result of some pump malfunction, only John starts to recognise a pattern. 

 _Bang bang bang. Bang-bang, bang-bang, bang-bang. Bang bang bang._ Pause. And again. 

It’s SOS. One bang for a dot and two fast knocks for a dash. The distant banging doesn’t cease. SOS. SOS. 

John looks around. Of course they haven’t given him anything that could serve as a weapon, not even a bloody water cup. Then he notices the taps. The thread on one is a bit loose, the tap not screwed in properly, and John attacks it with his teeth, rotating it until he can remove the tap, drop it on the floor and lift it again with his hands. It’s a tad more acrobatic than he would have liked given the state of his ribs but at last he has something to message back with. 

Dash-dot-dash-dot-dash, John quickly signals the international Morse prosign for _Start copying_ into one of the pauses on the other end of the pipeline. While he waits, he worries over several things at once. First, was this stranger a good enough Boy Scout to know about prosigns and what they mean? Then, who might the signaller be: could it be a bored guard, high on weed, having fun? Could it be some mind game of Sherlock’s? John cannot forget about Baskerville no matter how many perfectly all right cups of tea Sherlock has brought him since. Or could it be another prisoner? Have they caught Mary and is it her, trying to establish communication? And how much time will John have before some guard notices the sounds coming out of his cell? 

The line is silent for a moment and then the knocking returns tentatively, at a slower rate, and this time there are letters, words. 

John used to be good at copying, translating the code into words directly in his head, but this sequence of letters doesn’t make any sense to him. It takes him about thirty seconds to realise why: it’s some Asian language. Most likely Vietnamese. 

Oh, great, John thinks. It’s probably the enslaved godson of that old kiosk-owner, the poor bugger. At least it isn’t Mary; she wouldn’t know Vietnamese because her CIA allocation was Eastern Europe. Wonder if the guy knows English? Frustrated, John bangs on the pipe once, loudly, and then waits, holding his breath, for the guard to come to check on him. 

Nobody comes. The line waits. John can almost hear the question in the silence. So he takes over. 

 _Sorry_ , he taps out.

 _Who RU?_ sounds back. Thank God, John breathes out in relief. He thinks about his answer carefully. If this is some guard or a brain-washed Sherlock fucking with his mind, better keep his story consistent. 

 _Journalist. U?_

_Prisoner,_ is the answer. Then the transmission from the other side speeds up like an avalanche. 

 _Heard the water running in the pipes above. Figured out they have a visitor._  

Good for you I was so thirsty, John chuckles to himself as he listens to the frantic tapping  coming through the pipeline with an increasing speed. 

 _Have not talked to anyone for weeks_  

 _AS_ , John manages to squeeze into one of the pauses from the other side – the prosign for ‘Wait’. The poor Vietnamese guy might be communication starved but John’s copying speed has limits. Then he asks: 

 _How long UR there?_  

 _Not sure. No windows._  

Jesus. John remembers Dana reading out loud the article about weed farms and their gardeners, walled up in there with the plants for months. 

 _Can I help U?_ John signals even though he hasn’t the least idea how. 

 _Unlikely_. It seems the poor sod down there sees the situation in sober colours. Then his message continues. 

 _U think U get out?_  

 _Sure_ , John lies. 

It’s true that if they wanted to kill him, he’d be already dead. But this, this Sherlock... God, he can’t even think of him as Sherlock! John wants to believe that yesterday’s fall from the staircase left him concussed after all. He must have missed something during his interaction with Sherlock, something that would explain the whole mess at once. 

There’s another long pause on the other end and then the signal comes back again, faster than ever: _If U get out, tell police I am here. Call Interpol, not local police. Bribed._  

The last words come out so quickly, the spaces between almost non-existent, that John has difficulty discerning the characters. What’s the rush? he thinks to himself. Is the poor guy afraid that someone will come to check on the noise he’s making? 

 _What name I give?_ John asks. 

Now it’s simply too fast. _T, E_ , and then John loses track. Not that he feels guilty about it – _if_ he gets out, he can always ask the kiosk-owner the name of her godson. As the tapped tirade ends, John catches only a string of seven dots. 

He’s getting tired. More likely it was eight dots, the sign for a mistake being made and a request to delete the last word. John waits for the repeated message but before he can catch anything, he hears another sound. 

Long, measured strides, followed by heavier steps, in the corridor. 

John tosses the water tap into a corner so it will remain out of sight when the door opens and rolls into a lying position on the floor, away from the pipes. The shutter window slides open. 

“Good, he’s awake,” says Sherlock’s voice. Then, fainter, spoken to the side: “Take him out.”

 

*

 

They put a black canvas sack over his head before they lead him out of the cell. Despite it putting a temporary damper on his breathing, John takes it as a good sign: they obviously plan to keep him alive, at least for a while, and simply want to minimise his chances of escaping. 

Out of the door and turning to the left, John deliberately stumbles and slumps from time to time, hanging uselessly by the arms while the two gorillas – he can smell the distinct sharp note of gun oil and cigarettes even through the cloth – support him from either side. Let them think he’s worse off than he really is. A short corridor, then a muffled rattle of bars and the squeaking of hinges – a gate to a staircase. Down eleven steps, turn 180 degrees, another eleven steps. The air is cooler here. Ninety degrees to the right and through a narrow door frame immediately afterwards. The sack is pulled off his head and John blinks, drawing in a lungful of much welcomed air. 

He’s inside what must have been a guard room. The room was divested of all electronic equipment when the prison was shut down but the old furniture wasn’t worth moving. A narrow barred window facing the yard, a saggy sofa taking up the whole width of the room under the window, a scuffed table with a coffeemaker. The latter is new. So is the laptop lying on the floor by the sofa, plugged into a wall socket. This must be where Sherlock stays, his temporary control room. A shelf above the table is stacked with paper folders and there are dark coloured shirts neatly arranged on hangers in a wonky wardrobe– 

John freezes when he catches sight of himself in the long rusty mirror hanging inside the half-opened wardrobe door. He has treated these kinds of injuries countless times during his night shifts at St. Mary’s A&E, victims of muggings and violent pub brawls. It’s not his first black eye or split lip either; you don’t get through school being the smallest kid in the class without a bruise or two. It still feels worse than it looks, too. But his face is not what John is looking at. 

His hands are swollen and stained with dried blood. The rope he’s bound with, a run-of-the-mill white nylon cord, is soaked dark brown where it’s looped around his wrists. He must have scraped his shoulder and arm and bled a lot when he fell from the staircase. No wonder his fingers felt numb when he woke up later. Now, several hours later, the cord material has dried off, catching and chafing his skin. 

“You could have spared yourself this.” Sherlock comes in leisurely behind him, indicating the picture of misery in the mirror. John is silent. As Sherlock skims past him in the narrow room, the hairs at the back of John’s neck stand on end. The confusion creeps back: this discrepancy between what his eyes and his reason tell him and what his instincts are screaming at him. He ought to feel the need to sigh in relief at the familiar sight of Sherlock but instead he feels like he’s on the verge of a panic attack. 

“But I believe you’ve learnt your lesson.” 

The guards take a step back, leaning against the door frame on either side of the entrance but still close enough to bring John down in case he tries anything. Sherlock casts a brief glance out of the window and then sits down on the sofa, arms spread over the headrest and legs crossed, completely at ease. 

“Because I would very much like to hear what you can tell me about this,” Sherlock continues and fishes a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket. 

The sight makes John’s blood run cold. It’s the paper napkin with the sketch of John’s face which the little girl at the coach station gave him. Sherlock’s last breadcrumb on the long journey John undertook to find him. Only Sherlock is now looking at the sketch as if he never drew it himself, as if he never saw it before. 

“You didn’t draw this, it’s not a self-portrait. You have a distinctly asymmetric nose, my friend; the way you see yourself in a mirror is not what you really look like.” Sherlock seems to be in his generous deductive mode, talking away and not ordering his minions to make John answer by force. So far. 

“So, someone draws your face and gives it to you. A silly pastime while you wine and dine a talented young artist? Unlikely. The napkin is old, frayed along the folds. Yet I found it in your shirt pocket, in a clean and ironed shirt you put on yesterday morning. If it was a keep-sake you carry around, it would be looked after more carefully, not crumpled like this.” 

John had completely forgotten about the napkin. During the secretive conversation with the little girl he had simply snatched it and shoved it into his pocket. Now there’s a heavy ball in his stomach, growing with every word and telling him that it was a capital mistake. 

“Some _other_ person had this sketch and gave it to you when you met. Why did they have it? So they would recognise you when they saw you. How am I doing so far?” 

Oh, this is familiar, this challenging look on Sherlock’s face. How he always looks, as if he’s in a competition when he’s firing off his observations even though he’s the only genius in the room. John wonders if Sherlock ever played weird deduction battles with Mycroft when they were kids and now he tries to dazzle everyone simply out of habit. What’s far more disturbing is the question of why Sherlock is behaving as if he doesn’t remember his own clue. 

At last, John croaks, “Show-off.” Then he coughs. Speaking still hurts and he can’t even move his lips properly.   

Sherlock grins wolfishly. “Hard to impress a soldier like you, eh? But I’m not finished yet.”  

He turns the napkin in his fingers. “Why a pencil sketch on a napkin? Why not a printed photograph? It was drawn in a hurry, a spur of the moment decision. Someone pressed for time, expecting you to follow him but not having the time to wait for you. Tell me: did my brother send you after me?” 

John can’t help a bewildered blink of his eyes. Why would Sherlock expect _Mycroft_ to send John after him? How can he speak of his brother in front of members of a gang he’s supposed to have entered undercover? 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” John settles for biding his time. 

“Oh come on,” Sherlock laughs. “You’re no trifling web-journalist, my friend. You practically scream ex-Army, you were shot by a long-range assault rifle and you can handle a lot of pain. You’re calm now when most civilians would shake and beg. You’re used to dangerous situations. So tell me: MI6 or CIA?” 

 _This is going too far, Sherlock_ , John thinks. _I know you’re a brilliant actor but I’d be less nervous if you didn’t act as if you didn’t know me at all._  

“Doesn’t matter in the end, does it?” Sherlock smirks when John continues to stare in confusion. “MI6, CIA or some fool who owed my brother a favour: the thing is you’ve found me. And this little clue might tell me how.” 

John watches, inexplicable horror growing in the back of his mind, as Sherlock lifts the napkin to his nose and sniffs. 

“Asian spice. Stale but still distinct. I’d say Vietnamese, wouldn’t you? Did you enjoy your noodles, my friend?” 

 _Don’t, Sherlock, don’t show off in front of the bad guys,_ John pleads silently. Sherlock, as if he is psychic, does exactly the opposite. 

“I’d say that old Grandma Nguyen has been a trifle talkative.” 

Sherlock looks past the unabashed dismay on John’s face and directly addresses one of the guards. “You take the car and drive to Brno after nightfall. Make sure she won’t talk again. And while you’re at it, get the footage from the coach station security cameras. It’s a standard forty-eight hour loop, they’ll still be stored in the service building. I want to know who else our chatty cook has been talking to.” 

Now John panics. Mary will be on the footage, and Dana and Veronika, too. Innocent civilians. After all their precautions it’s John’s mistake that is sending a killer after them. Game or not, undercover or corrupted, this has gone too far. 

“Just stop it, Sh–” he blurts out but he doesn’t have to bite his tongue to stop mid-word – the backhand slap jerks his face to the side before he can even register Sherlock moving. In the span of a single syllable, the tall man is looming over him and for a moment John is immensely relieved that it’s a game after all, only a game, because right now Sherlock has stopped him from giving away his name– 

–then John turns his head back, lifts his eyes to Sherlock’s and freezes again. 

There’s a look in those eyes John has seen only once before. Not in Sherlock’s, never in Sherlock’s. It’s an unchecked fury, full rein anger, no sign at all of the safety valve of humanity, compassion, mercy, or even doubt. It’s the look in Moriarty’s eyes on the night at the pool. It’s the look of a psychopath. 

Suddenly it all makes sense. The instinctive dread, the repulsion John felt upon touch. He has let himself be fooled by the evidence of his eyes but there’s so much more to a person than looks. Smell, for instance. Months, years of living in the flat at Baker Street, permeated by Sherlock’s presence, and John never knew he was able to identify Sherlock’s smell until this moment. 

“Watch your mouth,” the man hisses but John barely hears him. His eyes scan the familiar face for signs of plastic surgery. From this distance, surely the tiny scars would still be visible? Only he can’t find any. But how could someone look so uncannily like Sherlock? It’s almost perfect – but yes, now, in the light of his new knowledge, John can see the little differences. The spot on the iris of Sherlock’s right eye: missing. Those slightly rounder cheekbones. The hairline above his left eye not receding quite as far as before.

It’s incredible. Highly improbable. But not impossible... and John has already eliminated all other possibilities. 

 _Did my brother send you after me?_ A line from the previous dialogue resurfaces in John’s mind and now he understands. 

And then another memory pops out like a buoy on a stormy sea surface. Those seven dots at the end of the Morse coded message. From a prisoner, held somewhere in the basement for weeks with no windows to account for the passing of time. Someone who initially signalled in Vietnamese because he needed the language to speak with the scared stallholders and thus had learned it in a couple of hours; who, upon hearing water running through the pipes, thought that it was some Vietnamese gardener and tried to contact him, to alert the world to his existence. Someone who talks so fast that when he signals in Morse he forgets to leave a proper space between characters. Someone who never once forgot to sign his text messages with his initials. 

Not seven dots. Three and four. SH. 

John gathers the fresh blood that has spilled from the re-opened cut on his lip and spits it into the face of Sherlock’s twin brother.


	12. Raided

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, heed the updated tags.

John doesn’t have to pretend to be weak when he’s half–led, half–carried back to his cell. He had been sure he was in for a good thrashing after such impertinence but then the psychopath’s phone had rung and he had dismissed John without another word. Now John’s brain is buzzing like a disturbed hive and there’s simply not enough strength and coordination left to move his limbs properly. So many clues, so many obscure little things have been brought into the light and are showing their true significance. 

The growing strain and desperation in Sherlock’s text messages to Mycroft – they’ve shown what kind of adversary Sherlock was up against. Someone who could undermine his best efforts, who could shake the ground under his feet, who was a match for him and maybe _more_ than a match. More than once, John has wondered what sort of criminal Sherlock would make if he turned against the law. Well, now he has seen it, and the picture wasn’t nice.  

 _So this was the mysterious F._ , John thinks to himself and wonders why and when this F. disappeared from the life of his family. There wasn’t a single framed photograph of Sherlock with his twin in the Holmes house at Christmas, and Sherlock has never given the tiniest hint that he wasn’t Mycroft’s only brother. _Perhaps he deleted him_ , John thinks, _or stuffed all the things about him into one room of his Mind Palace and then locked it away._

But for all his furious thinking, one thing doesn’t escape his notice: they don’t re-fasten his bonds when they throw him back into the solitary confinement cell. 

There’s one thing about knots on ropes: they tighten when they are wet, and loosen when they dry off again. His hands were dripping with blood when they tied him up yesterday, and in the dark of the night they probably didn’t even notice it. Now the rope is dry and already loose enough to slide around his wrists. John gets up, his ear pressed to the door, and as soon as the heavy stomping of the guards’ boots fades to nothing, he gives the bonds an experimental tug. The loops loosen another half-inch and if he could push them just a little bit lower he’d be able to reach the knot– 

His hands are swollen after being bound and contorted behind his back for so long, and it keeps him from reaching the knot. John swears under his breath and hopes the guards won’t decide to come back and check on him any time soon. Then he leans over the sink, turns the remaining tap full on and lets the water run and carefully, so that he won’t dampen the bonds, he puts his hands under the flow. 

It’s a hell of a position to hold for long, his back arched uncomfortably and his shoulders raising protests in turn, but the water is cold and after a while he can feel that the swelling of his fingers has subsided a good deal. He rubs them dry as best as he can on the back of his shirt and after a few minutes of patient work, his hands are free. 

A short metal pipe – the tap outlet, screwed out of the sink – and a loop of rope: they’re his only weapons. All he needs now is a moment of surprise.

 

In the meantime, there’s one more thing he has to make sure about. He lifts the tap from its hiding place in the corner behind the door and begins to knock on the water pipe. 

Dash-dot-dash-dot-dash, _Attention_ , he signals and waits a nervous second before he taps out: 

 _U still there?_  

Sherlock – and that already confirms to John that it’s really him when he doesn’t bother with an affirmative response first – launches into conversation immediately. 

 _I C U had not much luck in getting out._  

John snorts and decides to dive in head first. He has to be careful, though; Heaven knows who might be eavesdropping on their pipeline.

 _Sherlock_ , he signals and waits.  He doesn't add _It's John_ \- he knows that the _right_ Sherlock would know. 

There is no immediate response. As the pause grows longer, John presses his ear against the pipe and thinks he can hear a faint, distant echo of a human voice. It sounds like hysterical laughter. Or, more like sobs. It goes on for about half a minute while John whispers silent prayers into the cold metal. 

At last, the banging from the distance returns. _Prove yourself_ , the message reads. 

 _U first. I have to know this is not a mind game of your brother._ John is ninety-nine percent sure that the other person really is Sherlock but he’s not going to overlook that last one percent. 

 _Tell me something I never told anyone,_ John commands. In his mind, he urges Sherlock to think. There must be a thing they both know, some detail of their cases that never made it to the blog, something... Come on, Sherlock. If there is such a thing, you’ll think of it. 

After a while, the pipe resonates. Dot-dot-dash. Dash-dash. Dash-dash-dot-dash... 

John can’t stop himself from laughing out loud when he recognises the message. 

 _UMQRA_  

It’s true – John has never told a living soul about the night he pursued his own precious clue like a scenting greyhound only to discover a couple going at it in a dogging site. He didn’t even tell Sherlock; he only mentioned the cipher and then, the following morning, in his embarrassment he waved it off as a false alarm. 

 _U now,_ Sherlock signals shortly after, his concerns being probably the same. 

John doesn’t even need to think about it. _U had the wrong pill_ , he knocks out and he’s not even half-way through the last _‘L’_ when he catches the staccato of a fired-off response _No I had the right one!_  

John’s ribs hurt too much to laugh but he doesn’t care.

 

For the next couple of minutes, John has to repeatedly interrupt or at least slow down Sherlock’s frantic and incessant flow of questions and demands. Unfortunately, Sherlock appears to have no knowledge of his location in the building; he only mentions _blindfolds_ and _carried unconscious_ when asked, dodging the subject. John suspects that _drugged_ has also been on the agenda and the thought makes his blood boil. 

Other than that, Sherlock treats the communication canal like a starving man would treat a free buffet, demanding all sorts of trivial information and craving reassurance. It also seems to John that he’s mad with worry. 

 _U did not call him by my name I hope?_ It’s one of the first urgent questions. 

_Almost did, but no._

_Thank God._

This is weird, John thinks. One would think that even that one syllable had been enough to give everything away, especially when it provoked such a vicious reaction. 

 _If he found out we were familiar you would be in grave danger._  

Yes, John can understand this; however, he already gave away that he knows Sherlock, he did give away that he thought he was dealing with Sherlock, didn’t he? 

But then two things happen at once, putting the whole puzzling conversation aside. There haven’t been any sounds of traffic during the day, the main road on the north too far away and the prison access road shut to traffic, but now John hears something from outside – like a big car – no, several cars approaching the prison grounds. At the same moment, the heavy booted steps of a guard can be heard in the corridor. John hides his hands behind his back, half-standing and leaning against the wall, and tightens his fingers around the tap outlet. Outside the door, he hears the click of a safety catch being released. 

The universe must have a sense of justice after all, John decides when he sees that the brute entering his cell with a gun in his hand is Anton. That’s why he’s not the least bit sorry when during the ensuing struggle one of Anton’s hands gets caught in the door at exactly the same moment as John slams their bodies against it, the unyielding metal breaking Anton’s fingers in a single _crack_. The inhuman howl Anton lets out as he drops the gun would worry John more if simultaneously there isn’t an explosion from the outside. Probably at the entrance gate. 

The prison is being raided, and judging from the long bursts of submachine gun fire interspersed with the quick barking of semi-automatics, it’s the gate guards against the police. 

Anton most likely realises he won’t be getting any help from his mates because he fights like a rabid dog, pulling out a knife with his good hand and earning a hard stroke with the outlet across the wrist for his trouble. He’s got the bulk but John has been trained to fight bigger and heavier men and after two seconds Anton is rolling on the floor, half-unconscious and groaning. John puts the rope to good use again, binding Anton’s hands behind his back and stuffing his own dirty handkerchief into his mouth, and then he does something he’d never thought himself capable of: he stomps on the fingers of Anton's uninjured hand as it rests on the floor. With all his strength. That bastard won't be mashing anyone's face any time soon.

He’s fairly sure that any muffled cries from his cell won’t attract any more gang members. The attention of everyone in the building is currently on the battlefield in the yard. 

Anton’s gun is a CZ 75 pistol, commonly used by both Czech armed forces and Russian law enforcement. God only knows where Anton got it. John checks the magazine and leaves the safety off. With the knife tucked into the back of his jeans, he runs through the corridor to the opening of the staircase. 

There’s an old evacuation plan of the building hanging on the wall at the top of the stairs. The red circle on it tells John that he’s currently on the second floor. It narrows down the possibilities where Sherlock could be held. John remembers that Sherlock told him that he heard _water running above_ when he first contacted him. The plan also shows large open space workshop halls in the basement; that’s probably where the weed is grown. 

John creeps down the stairs, watchful but quick. Anton had been sent to kill him before the police arrived and John is afraid that similar treatment might be given to the problem of their other prisoner. When he’s about to round the turn between the two flights of steps, he hears the squeak of a door opening on the floor below. He drops and flattens himself on the floor, peering carefully down through the banisters. 

It’s the psychopath, Sherlock’s brother, coming out of the control room with his laptop case and walking down the steps swiftly but unhurriedly, as if he knows he’s got enough time to destroy evidence and escape. John watches the curls on the top of his head bobbing as he jogs down, passing the ground level and continuing into the basement, and regrets that there isn’t enough room and a good enough angle between the banisters for a clear shot. 

The first floor looks empty now. John runs through it, checking every cell. Nobody’s here. The barking of gunfire from the outside draws nearer; voices are heard, distorted through a loudspeaker: presumably commands to surrender. 

John arrives at the ground floor and it’s the third in line, a north-facing cell, from where he hears the weak banging and thumping. He wonders for a moment why the sounds aren’t louder but the question is abruptly answered when he throws the door open and the man behind it immediately goes down in a heap, covering his eyes. The cell is small and dark, and in the light coming from the corridor John can see that both the walled-up window and the door have been fitted with thick layers of glass wool insulation. 

This wasn’t done simply to prevent anyone from the outside hearing Sherlock’s calls for help. It was done to isolate Sherlock from the sounds of the living world, from every trace of daylight, from anything that could tell him where or at least for how long he had been held. 

Then Sherlock looks up and John’s heart almost gives in to the turmoil of feelings, immense relief mixing with blinding fury at those _people_ who have dared to hurt Sherlock, torture him with darkness and silence that for his ever-racing mind must have been worse than physical pain. Sherlock is blinking and tears are falling from his eyes, unused to the brightness after so long, and when he at last squints enough to take a proper look at John, his pale face grows even paler in horror.

 “I’m sorry, John, I’m so sorry,” he blurts out, voice rough with disuse. He’s taking in all the evidence of the last twenty-four hours, John’s black eye, battered face, blood stained clothes – and John has to blink back the prickling in his eyes because there is simply no time for this. 

“That’s my line, you idiot,” he says instead of what he wants to say, _I’m sorry for what happened to you, I’m sorry you had to go alone, I’m sorry for so many things I don’t even know where to start._ There will be time for talking later. Right now he’s registering some commotion outside the booby-trapped front entrance and several men’s voices coming from the basement, abrupt orders and warning calls. They’re probably packing or destroying the evidence, but John couldn’t care less. He hauls Sherlock up, wrapping one arm around his _too thin too prominent_ ribs, and drags him back towards the staircase, up the stairs. Sherlock’s skin is far too cold under John’s fingers, he’s got no shirt on and he’s barefoot but he tries to walk even though he bites his lip in pain. 

“This place is about to become a battlefield,” John explains and as if on cue, an explosion from the front door shatters the hallway and covers everything in a cloud of plaster dust. John notes that it was a controlled, directed explosion, police pyrotechnics making short work of the booby trap, and now black-clad silhouettes wearing balaclavas are pouring in, sliding to their knees in tactical positions. The dust floating in the air reflects the red beams of the laser sights on their guns. Then someone from the basement level tries to climb the stairs to escape, shooting around himself blindly, the cracks of shots ear-shattering in the confined space, and hell breaks loose anew. 

“We’d better hide here until it calms down,” John shouts as he half-carries Sherlock up the stairs into the corridor on the first floor. He’s checking him as he speaks, his doctor’s brain going almost on autopilot, registering and cataloguing scars, cigarette marks, burns from electrocution, signs of starvation. _Now_ he’s seeing the spectre he had expected. He had imagined that when he finally traced Sherlock he would find him exhausted and careworn and perhaps defeated, and instead he had met someone - his twin - who looked the picture of health. Now John feels a stab of shame that he had almost _wanted_ to find Sherlock in the state that presently greets his eyes, when he never truly wanted this to happen, not something this _awful_ , and the blood is loud in his ears and he wants to to hunt down _that bastard_ who dares to look so much like Sherlock, only impeccably healthy and fit. He doesn’t mention any of it, though, as he sees that Sherlock is trying to protect his body, hide the marks, but John is going to remember them, he’s going to see them in his mind long after they heal, and God, someone will pay for this. 

“Where’s my brother?” Sherlock breathes out once they’re settled a bit, hiding at the top of the stairs, waiting for the situation down below them to clear. 

“Saw him going down to check on the farm just before it all started,” John shrugs. He has to shout his next words as the fight downstairs escalates. “He’s going to be caught there.” 

The slight change of air behind him, the whisper of silk against skin – John notices it too late among the sounds of mayhem from below. The cold circle of a gun barrel is pressed to his temple and a well known voice rumbles in his ear. 

“I’m afraid that your information is a bit outdated, Doctor Watson.” 

Too late, John remembers that the evacuation plan showed a narrow emergency staircase connecting the far end of the corridors. 


	13. Sacrifices Must Be Made

“When the ship is sinking, one doesn’t just leave their pet rat behind, does one? Drop the gun, Doctor.” 

John does as he’s told, unable to tear his eyes off the expression on Sherlock’s face. His friend is curled up against the banisters and looking back at him with raw, unfiltered despair. 

The brother kicks John’s pistol away, then pulls the knife from John’s jeans and throws it to join the gun. 

“I was on my way to collect my little lab rat and guess what I saw – that you’ve already done it for me.” Sherlock’s brother clicks his tongue. “What a touching reunion. Had I known who you were, that you had my brother’s big squishy heart in your hands, I’d have had them sawn off and given to Billy as a late birthday present.” 

John doesn’t miss the clench of Sherlock’s jaw on hearing the diminutive use of his first name. Neither does the brother, it seems – he takes a step back, the aim of his gun unwavering, and nods towards the staircase. “Glad to see you’re not as weak as you appeared to be, _Johnny_. You do the hard work for me and carry our Billy, will you? Up we go, gentlemen.” 

John wants to jump at the bastard and force the gun down his throat even if he has to take a bullet in the process but the terror in Sherlock’s eyes stops him. Psychopath or not, this man is a Holmes and not some over-weight brute with a paramilitary hobby. John would probably have his brains blown out before he even moved. He throws one of Sherlock’s arms around his shoulders and begins to climb the steps. 

“That’s a SWAT team down there,” John points out as they leave the third floor for the fourth. “You’ve got no chance.” 

“I’ve got the _only_ chance,” the psychopath’s amused voice retorts from behind them. “I’ve got two precious hostages.” 

On the topmost floor there is an aluminium extension ladder hanging under a hatch door leading to the roof. Sherlock has to go first, barely managing to pull himself up, and then John follows, feeling the gun barrel pressed into the soft spot between his jaw and throat and the madman breathing down his neck, leaving no room for surprise. As soon as they are all in the broad daylight Sherlock collapses, folding onto his knees on the roof surface. 

“Just make up your mind, Ford, and kill me already,” he groans. 

“Oh brother mine,” the man called Ford tuts disparagingly, “did you really think this was about me wanting to be the only twin? That I really saw you as any kind of _competition_?” 

He nudges the gun under John’s jaw and forces him farther away from the hatch door, away _from Sherlock_ , on the vast expanse of the flat roof covered in black, sun-warmed tar. There’s an antenna of a mobile signal jammer fixed to a concrete base and Ford moves to lean against it, covering his back, with John as a human shield in front of him. All the time, he doesn’t stop talking. 

“You should have known our Billy when we were kids, John. A little loner, always desperate for approval, always throwing tantrums, insulting his peers, poor kid wanting friends and _suffering_ by not having any. I, on the other hand, was the nice one. I got along with everyone admirably. You know, John, people’s _feelings_ are just child’s play when you simply don’t care.” 

His voice goes regretful, but not soft – it’s not genuine, only a sharp edged mocking imitation. 

“For a while, I even managed to fool our parents. But not Mycroft... one can’t really pull anything on Mycroft, can one? He always liked _you_ better.” 

Ford looks down on Sherlock and draws his lips back from his teeth in an ugly smile. “In the end I figured out that the only way to hurt Mycroft was to destroy you.” 

From their position on the roof, John can’t see what’s happening in the yard. The access road is swarming with action, police cars arriving and leaving, and John can hear the distant barking of service dogs, the characteristic shouting of dog handlers. Soon, the SWAT team should begin to sweep the building and then they will find the hatch door... 

When the black knit material of a balaclava appears in the opening of the hatch door, John is surprised that it’s not one of the rifle-armed police snipers he saw downstairs – this man has only a hand-gun, a small one, and he is quite small for a– 

 _Shit, it’s Mary_ , John realises and the two seconds of her confusion upon seeing _two_ Sherlocks are enough for her to lose any tactical advantage she ever had. 

“Take that off, and grace us with your pretty face, _Annamária –_ and be a good girl and close that door behind you.” Ford grins at her, pressing the gun under John’s chin to make him tilt his head back when she doesn’t obey quickly enough. “I was wondering when you’d show up. When our brave doctor is here, his good wife can’t be far away, right?” 

“How does the bastard know my name?” Mary asks, her hand dangerously tight around her Walther PPK. John remembers the shot-through coin at Leinster Gardens and wishes Mary could pull a bit of her magic here too but despite Sherlock’s jokes about long coats and short friends, Ford is managing to hide himself behind John just right. 

“Oh, you don’t remember me?” he whines outrageously. “But true, there wasn’t anything memorable about the Serbian farce you were in six years ago. And you quite shamefully died before I could take the reins properly. Of course I never believed that you’d stay like that for long.” 

“It was you – you were behind that take-over,” Mary says, eyes wide in surprise. 

“That’s where I began. A trial run. But things weren’t going smoothly enough. The local warlords were a tough nut to crack. I almost considered leaving and starting my business elsewhere when the most amazing thing happened. My invaluable brother decided to go on a crusade against Moriarty’s empire! He most conveniently brought down the worst of the warlords in the process, and as a side effect, he cleared the way for me.” 

John would shake his head in exasperation if he could but the gun barrel under his jaw doesn’t yield for a second. 

“Funny, isn’t it?” Ford laughs at Sherlock. “You were going through Europe like a scorching wind, laying down mayhem and ruin, and I’ve been waiting and later, in your wake, slowly putting together the pieces.” 

John now understands all the text messages – reports on gang leaders gone missing, small groups forcibly merged, everything orchestrated by a brilliant, insane mind. 

“You want to know, Annamária, what gave _you_ away? You think our Billy here talked – you think I might have made him – I can see it from the way your hand twitches. You want to shoot him again, don’t you? But you’re not giving him enough credit, love. I knew where to find you the moment I saw my brother’s bullet scar.” 

“Shut–” Mary begins but Ford only chuckles, indicating the gun in his hand and the exact position where it is pressed. 

“That’s your signature, admit it is. A shot through the liver to the inferior vena cava.” 

John can’t help the way his body jerks at hearing this and Ford laughs viciously before letting his head fall forward again so he can look Mary in the face. 

“Don’t look so startled, John,” Ford continues. “Such surgical precision on a first try? Come on. This beautiful assassin has practised her aim on quite a lot of people. I believe it was her favourite way of execution: a slow one. Bleeding out. Knowing you’re going to die.” 

Ford drawls the last words as if he is caressing them with his tongue and John is suddenly feeling very cold even under the afternoon sun blazing on the roof. Mary’s face is the one she had on when they met at the foot of the Little Top, when she whirled around expecting him to be an enemy: it’s a face belonging above a gun sight, eyes steel-cold, all her being a mere extension of the gun – the face of a perfect killer. 

Ford’s voice is meditative now. “You know, I didn’t like the idea of anyone harming our Billy – other than me, of course. So when I saw a distinctly familiar scar about one year old, I picked up the phone and made a few calls. And lo and behold, an anonymous informer called the CIA with valuable knowledge about their very much wanted renegade.” 

Mary is looking at Sherlock again, and John seriously can’t tell if she’s sorry for having suspected him or if she regrets not killing him properly so that nobody would ever be able to draw the link between him and her. He can’t read her now, it’s someone else whom he doesn’t know at all, and it terrifies him. 

Sherlock weakly lifts his head. “Sorry I failed you, Mary.” 

“You _really_ did a number on him!” Ford exclaims, his laughter full of glee. “I’ve had him here for weeks, trying to break him. I’ve tested his strength, his dignity–” Sherlock curls tighter on himself instinctively and the suppressed fury in John steps up a notch, “–his sanity... but nothing I could do would break him the way you already had. You shot him and you–” he jabs John in the ribs, “–made him think he deserved it! You both made him take a gun and blow a man’s brains out – you made him a murderer! Did you know my brother never killed anyone before? Marvelous. Wonderful. My childhood dreams come true.” 

John remembers his first night with Sherlock – the careful, wary question Sherlock asked him after John shot the cabbie. _Are you all right? You have just killed a man._ And John had shrugged it off and laughed, because he _wasn’t_ a very nice man, and John had killed before, and when you’re a soldier you can’t afford thoughts like that, that by killing you’re taking away something that wasn’t yours to take, that you’re putting an end to something you didn’t start, that the power over life and death shouldn’t belong to a _man_ – you just can’t think like that, because then you’d be a good-for-nothing soldier. But Sherlock... Sherlock was never a soldier, and yet John had made him kill. 

“But back to business,” Ford announces and John glances around to find that snipers have taken positions on the roof of the other building. They can’t get a clear shot because of the jammer Ford is hiding behind and, from the way they keep looking up, they’re waiting for helicopter support. 

Ford seems to be counting on that helicopter too. “Nice place it was, this prison,” he remarks. “Plenty of roofs for a chopper to land on. Well now, Annamária, we have to rationalise a bit – we can’t _all_ get into one.” 

She stares at him, and John’s blood is beginning to run cold in his veins because he knows what Ford will say next. 

“Do I have to spell it out for you? This is the part where you shoot my brother or I shoot your husband.” 

“Ford–!” Sherlock’s voice is the only strong thing left in him, it seems, and John would flinch at the murderous rage in it if he had room to move. 

“Two hostages are better than one,” Mary says even as she’s taking a few steps back from Sherlock, as if to get a better angle of shot at him as he half-sits, half-kneels on the roof. 

Ford laughs. “But there’s no way you’ll walk off this roof _free_ , is there? You made a deal with the devil. You’re going to be deported and rot in prison, never to see your baby again.” 

Mary’s grip on her gun tightens. 

“Or you can come with me,” Ford lays the bait for her, voice low, alluring. “I’ll let you and your precious husband go once I am safe again.” 

 _She’s a liability, unpredictable, because she loves Emma_. John recalls his own subconscious observations from the imaginary conversations with Sherlock and he’s terrified. Mary already demonstrated that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do to keep those she loves. Her resolve to leave that life behind, her determination to pay back what Sherlock had done for her – all that can go, and will go, to the wind if she thinks there’s no other way to keep John alive and Emma with her. 

 _But you will never keep me if you kill him_ , he tries to communicate through his eyes and from the hard set of Mary’s mouth he knows she understands. _But what if this isn’t enough_ , John fears, what if Mary settles for keeping Emma and letting go of him? 

John watches Mary lift her gun – hand steady – and everything stills: John’s vision goes blurry around the edges as his pupils dilate with adrenaline. There must be a way out of this, he pleads in his mind just like before; there is always one more miracle, isn’t there? 

“And a proper kill shot this time, please,” Ford adds. “No fussing around, no surgery: just an old-fashioned shot between the eyes.” 

The sunlight bouncing off the hot air trembling above the roof surface is making John’s eyes water, there’s an immeasurable space between one heartbeat and the next and then Mary lifts her hand a fraction more and fires. John feels the bullet rip through the warm air just milimetres from his ear, he hears the hitch in breath behind him as Ford ducks a little and the bullet doesn’t hit him, he’s unharmed, Mary missed–

Something clinks sharply behind John and then Ford grunts, his weight suddenly pushing John forward. Instinctively, John moves away and turns around; the press of the gun at his neck is gone, and then Ford is falling to his knees, blood bubbling out of his mouth, and John wrenches the gun out of his hand and takes another step back, still not quite processing what just happened. 

Mary hit the metal rod of the antenna so that the bullet would ricochet and hit Ford in the back.Ford is lying face down on the tar, drawing in gurgling breaths as he drowns in the blood filling his lungs, and John leans close, whispering in his ear: 

“The East Wind has come.” 

Then he flips the gun in his hand, grasping the barrel, and smacks the gunstock solidly over Ford’s head.

 


	14. Epilogue

“You know, I really like travelling, but there’s no place like London.” 

John sighs contentedly, the feeling of _rightness_ spreading through his guts like a sip of hot chocolate, warm and thick and sweet. It’s in the air he breathes, filled with the smell of antiseptics and talc, it’s in the scratch of a thousand-times-over washed hospital gown on his skin, and above all, it’s in the feel of the warm weight of Emma Rose, squirming on his lap and gurgling over her fist stuffed in her mouth. 

Sherlock, from his hospital bed, eyes her warily. “She’s beautiful,” he eventually says, a little reluctantly. 

John chuckles. “No, she’s really not.” He looks at his daughter, her nose runny and her plump mouth drooling all over her front as usual. “But she seems to be taking after Mary, so at least she’ll be pretty when she grows up a bit.” 

Emma gurgles again and bestows a wide two-toothed smile at him. She’s at the right age to smile at everyone and everything including her own reflection, and to John it seems that she didn’t even notice anything amiss during those two weeks that had felt like a lifetime for him.   

John hasn’t told Sherlock exactly how he came by the bruises and scrapes that still decorate his face and upper torso. He hasn’t told him about the suspicions, doubts, or feelings of betrayal either, and he’s made a silent oath that he never will. 

There are more important things he’s dying to discuss, anyway. John clears his throat. 

“Well. Ford?” 

“George Sherrinford Scott Holmes. He hated that name, by the way.” 

“Is it any wonder? Your family’s naming tradition... what’s wrong with Phil or Dave?” 

“ _You_ can talk, John _Hamish_ ,” Sherlock smirks and John would give him a piece of his mind if little Emma wasn’t already slowly falling asleep in his arms. So he cradles her tighter and lowers his voice. 

“How come I didn’t know you had another brother?” 

“Because I already didn’t by the time we met.” Sherlock presses the button on the remote control of the bed, pushing himself into more of a sitting position. 

“Ford was committed to psychiatric care when we were fifteen. He was diagnosed with homicidal tendencies and kept in a high security mental home. When he was twenty seven, we were told that he had committed suicide. Doused himself with petrol and burned to death – they only found charred remnants. We buried him, mourned him...” 

Sherlock runs his fingers absentmindedly over the faded pale spots in the crook of his elbow. Needle marks. 

“For a long time, I was afraid that I’d end up like him. That something would go wrong with me and I’d become him,” he admits quietly. For a couple of seconds, the only sound to be heard is Emma’s light snoring. _You could never be that cold_ , John tries to communicate just through the warmth in his eyes, and Sherlock seems to understand. His tone is lighter and more matter-of-fact when he adds: 

“I think I’ll have to look into that suicide case – it’s obvious now that it was a murder. He must have manipulated the dental records and escaped from England, then set about creating his own kingdom in Eastern Europe.” 

“This fake suicide business must run in the family,” John remarks and then he wishes he’d bitten off his tongue when he watches Sherlock trying to hide the pain of regret and remorse, like it is a burden he’s been living with for so long that he doesn’t even notice the way it pushes at his shoulders and cripples his spine. 

 _Okay, John: time to be a soldier,_ he tells himself, catching Sherlock’s gaze and holding it. If their adventure has taught him anything, it’s that forgiveness is meant to lift burdens from the hearts of _both_ parties involved, and that you can’t say sorry to a dead man. 

“I am sorry I made you think that what you did was unforgivable.” Deep breath. There. He’s said it. 

Sherlock is biting his lip but doesn’t avert his eyes. “I am sorry I forced your hand in the Underground carriage. I thought – you are a man who doesn’t talk about his feelings – that I’d make it easier for you by giving you an opportunity. I didn’t realise that you’d see it as a necessity – that you wouldn’t mean it.” 

John shakes his head. Yes, he hated being manipulated, but... “I _meant_ it. Only I didn’t _want_ to mean it, if that makes sense.” 

“I could feel it,” Sherlock goes on, “but I couldn’t even describe it. As if I couldn’t... _click_ with you any more. You were there – on cases, and everything – but not really there.” 

“I’ve been putting distance between us,” John admits. “Because, Sherlock... you’re such a dangerous man for anyone to need. You keep running away and shutting me out and you just don't get that someone could need you, not your sacrifice, simply you.” 

Now Sherlock is definitely not looking at him when he asks quietly, “What is there about me that you could possibly need?” 

John wants to laugh in disbelief at the rare display of such _stupidity_ but then he remembers Dana, so small behind the steering wheel when she said _It scares me that I don’t know what she sees in me..._  

Sherlock keeps his voice low. “I thought you admired my methods, at first. People usually told me to piss off but you called my deductions amazing.” His words gain speed. “But then I came back and the magic had worn off, it was only _show–off_ and _drama queen_... so I thought it’s about the danger, and I tried to lure you back with it, but it turned out you’d got Mary to keep you in trouble–” 

“Sherlock!” John interrupts him, almost waking Emma. He waits for her snoring to settle back into rhythm and then he says, softer, “I just need _you_. I need you in my life.” 

Sherlock’s doubtful eyes rest on Emma. “But what about–” 

John draws a deep breath. “In the past fourteen days, I’ve dashed through four European countries, committed several thefts, made a hoax bomb call, crossed borders illegally, got involved with ID forgery, fare dodging, mugging and some grievous bodily harm, got my arm sprained by a self-taught Bartitsu expert, been shot at, had to jump on and off a running train, fell off a staircase, got my head kicked in and almost got shot again, fought MI6, the CIA, and an international crime syndicate, and all that well within the frame of my marriage. So I guess a bit of old-fashioned crime-solving around London is nothing my family couldn’t handle.” 

Sherlock summons the strength to look offended. “Old-fashioned?” 

“About those criminal acts you’ve just enumerated, Doctor Watson,” a smooth voice is heard at the door, “you’ll find that a blind eye has been turned to most of them.” 

John remembers the camera at St Pancras International, the silent approval of Mycroft Holmes. Said man comes in to stand at Sherlock’s bedside and levels an expectant look at John, but John’ll be damned if he’s going to thank him first. 

At last Mycroft relents. “After Sherlock disappeared, I lost hope. I am glad you didn’t.” His gaze sweeps over the hollows in Sherlock’s cheeks and the slowly healing wounds on his body. John looks past the well-pressed lines of Mycroft’s suit, past the perfectly balanced probabilities of his thinking, and wonders what fierceness of heart must be hidden inside that it needs to be guarded this carefully. 

“Did you know who it was Sherlock would be looking for before you sent him on that mission?” John can’t help but ask. 

“I didn’t,” Mycroft admits. “And when Sherlock discovered that his prey was actually his not-so-deceased brother, I almost recalled him. Unlike Moriarty, our brother was the only one who could truly match Sherlock’s abilities. Same talents, same brilliance of intellect–” Sherlock rolls his eyes and lets out a huff that Mycroft ignores, “–the only difference being, Doctor, that whereas Sherrinford was devoid of feelings, Sherlock had enough heart for both of them.” 

Mycroft again ignores the mortally offended glare Sherlock gives him and continues addressing John. 

“For the longest time, I thought that this predilection for _getting involved_ would be my brother’s ultimate failure. I’m glad you’ve proved me wrong.” 

Now Sherlock cannot contain himself any longer. “Wrong? _You?_ I can’t believe I’ve lived to hear this.” 

Mycroft smiles to no-one in particular and leaves the room, Sherlock masking his embarrassment by glaring daggers at the ceiling and John feeling a bit dumbfounded, as usual, after dealing with Mycroft. 

“I suppose that was his way of saying thank you,” he manages at last. 

“No – he’s already done that,” Mary says, coming in and taking Emma from John’s arms. He rubs his forearms and rolls his shoulders; keeping the baby in one position has turned out to be harder than standing at attention for hours. 

“What do you mean?” he asks. 

“Did you say yes?” Sherlock asks her before she has time to open her mouth. She makes a face and then nods. 

“Yes, I did. Not much choice after all.” 

“Hey– I’m here, too! What are you talking about?” John looks from one to the other. 

Sherlock leans back comfortably in the pillows. “Mary’s telling you that she’s been offered a position as an MI6 agent and that she gladly accepted it with the stipulation of– two?” 

“Three,” Mary corrects. 

“Three years’ postponement of long-term missions abroad for the sake of the upbringing of your daughter.” 

John opens his mouth. Then he closes it. 

“Oh for God’s sake!” Mary whispers so as not to wake Emma. “How do you think I managed to summon a small army to raid that prison in such a short time? Local police useless, Interpol too far away, and _I_ didn’t have the number of the great deus ex machina that is Mycroft Holmes. But there _were_ trained and armed men not three hours away by car, in Vienna...” 

“You called in the CIA,” John realises. Then he recalls Ford's words on the roof: _You made a deal with the devil._ That's what he meant. If it weren't for Mary's marksmanship...

“At least Mycroft negotiated this for me. It will be fine. In the end, it’s something I am trained for.” 

“The Watsons live in danger and there is nothing you can do about it, John,” Sherlock smirks. 

“There’s nothing I’d _want_ to do about it,” John retorts, his head still reeling. But, yes, the feeling of rightness is still there. 

They will make it work. 

All three of them.


End file.
